nicom says it has initiated an emergency plan and sent technicians to the disaster areas to recover the communications. There is no firm timeline on when the systems will be fully operational again'. The news item highlighted two issues, one that cellular networks are not immune to natural disasters, a fact already well proven by Katrina and other relatively cataclysmic events, the second that SMS, (the short-message service) one of the simplest parts of the cellular protocol stack, continues to expand its role as a fundamental enabler for emergency communications and a mechanism for getting on with life in troubled times. In practice, the Chinese networks were restored quickly but SMS had provided the most bandwidth efficient and link budget efficient mechanism for getting in touch with friends and family affected by the disaster. Also, because an SMS text is more robustly channel coded and has a high energy per bit than voice the text will get through in conditions in which a voice call would fail. The Chinese government has also shown a developed awareness of the political value of SMS. The following is an extract from a blog just after the earthquake Earthquake: China uses text messaging to assure public Mon, 05/12/2008 - 11:48 am The full extent of the damage caused by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit China's Sichuan Province on Monday afternoon is just starting to become clear. The quake was felt in Beijing and Shanghai and in places as far reaching as Taipei, Hanoi and Bangkok. In order to reassure people and to squelch false rumors, the Chinese government is using SMS text messaging to mobile phones as well as internet postings to inform people that the areas where they live are not in the seismic zone. Over a million such messages were sent in nearby Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Guizhou Province. The government plans to use text messaging not only for emergencies, but for various situations relating to the public interest. The plan is part of the government's new openness in information regu