Cell networks handle massive volume with few glitches

Months of planning by the USA's biggest cellphone carriers paid off Tuesday, with the Washington, D.C., networks of AT&T, Verizon and Sprint handling millions of additional calls, texts and downloads without any major incidents or failures. As of midday, Sprint was reporting a 211% increase in traffic — voice, data and text — in and around the Mall area in downtown Washington, site of the noon ET presidential inauguration. "There have been some delays in text deliveries and receipt, but otherwise, it's going very, very well," said Sprint spokesman John Taylor. He said calling volume dropped considerably after the swearing-in ceremony. The story was much the same at Verizon, which saw call volume more than triple in the hours leading up to the inauguration. Even so, there were no major disruptions, says Verizon spokesman John Johnson.