Cell phone service jammed after an earthquake rattled the eastern seaboard, suggesting providers may need to better ensure mobile phone lines remain open during emergencies.

AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile all reported disruptions after the magnitude 5.8 earthquake hit outside Richmond, Va. The quake didn’t damage any cell phone towers, but because so many people in major East Coast cities, including Boston, New York and Washington D.C., felt the quake, huge numbers of people started calling each other, jamming the lines.

CITA, the wireless trade industry association, on Tuesday urged people to send text messages and emails to contact loved ones, rather than call each other on networks that were experiencing higher-than-normal traffic.

Despite many advances in cellular technology, massive bursts of traffic can still clog up networks because cellular towers are only able to handle so much traffic, according to CITA.

Many customers were frustrated because of the jammed lines. When people couldn’t get hold of each other by phone, they turned to Facebook and Twitter. Many of these people wanted not only to talk about the tremor, but to complain about not being able to make phone calls.

Sprint also went onto Twitter to ask people to use text messages instead of calling and to announce the “temporary mass calling event.”

An earthquake can shake cell phone tower equipment out of order, but Tuesday’s problem occurred because too many people were trying to use their cell phones, according to Philip Solis, research director of mobile networks for ABI Research, to NBC.

“Since the tremors weren’t strong enough to shake or break things, especially in places farther away from the center of the earthquake, connections are slower than normal because everyone wants to find out if their loved ones felt the earthquake, too,” Solis said Monday.

The growing trend of using social media, rather than calling loved ones directly, may prove more efficient and reduce some of the jamming and allow for true emergency calls to go through.

In June, Facebook officials met with members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the California Emergency Management Agency to discuss ways the social network may expand the increasingly important role it plays in coordinating response efforts and to explore ways it can be used to notify communities of impending disasters.

Also, apps such as the Auto-BAHN, which allows people to send messages to each other even when cell phone service is jammed or otherwise unavailable, may well be the solution to allowing emergency communications to continue.

Meanwhile, cell phone companies are working to extend 4G services to much of the nation, and as more antennas go up, the problems with jammed cell phone signals may very well become a thing of the past. But companies may still face a challenge providing enough service for everybody, particularly in extreme emergency situations, as cell phone use continues to expand.

[Thanks: http://www.mobiledia.com]