When disasters such as dust storms, hurricanes or flooding strikes, often electricity supply failure is one of the consequences. Mobile and fixed networks in disaster areas will face severe issues: base stations and servers are destroyed, run out of power, engines can’t be restarted, roads are blocked etc. There exist public warning system messages, but the information transmitted is often very coarse and contains only basic instructions. People need detailed information where is the next shelter, which roads are free, where to get drinking water and the mobile connection is the only way to get to that information. This often results that the already weak infrastructure is then being overloaded or the emergency numbers are blocked and unreachable due to caller demand.
Users are bound to their network operators, even in disaster situations. The phones can see other networks, but they are “forbidden networks”. In a disaster case, the operators may offer free access to all users in to provide connectivity for both the victims and the rescue workers, but that doesn’t help if the technology can’t support it today. We will outline an approach how phones and networks can temporarily be adjusted to support that any user can use any network in a “Disaster Mode”. The approach also takes into consideration how to restrict this to a geographical area, avoid fraud and how to set it back when it is no longer needed.