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COMMS failure is short for communications failure. It is used to describe a break down of COMMS (communications systems) especially during emergencies where a lack of communication causes problems.
It is also used to describe an error caused by the inability to communicate in between computer hardware or software. In military operations, a COMMS failure is often the cause of blue-on-blue deaths or "friendly fire" incidents.
COMMS failure is used by activists in an expanded sense to describe communications problems. It is originally a military term.
Causes of COMMS Failure
COMMS failures are usually due to malfunctioning equipment or communicator's human error.
Equipment Failure
- signal loss
- service provider malfunction
- dead batteries
- unpaid cell phone bills
- inadequate range
Human Error
- misplaced or forgotten phone
- unheard phone call due to loud music or other distractions
- Failure to reactivate phone's ringer after setting to vibrate for event
- Inability to reach people
- contact information lost, incorrect or out-of-date
- promised contact not made
- failure to inform someone of something in a timely fashion
- people being out of the loop
- information being lost or forgotten
- confused people miscommunicating
- misinterpreted communications
- insufficient skill to operate equipment
- inadequate contact information
- passive aggressive avoidance of responsibility
COMMS Discipline: Preventing COMMS Failures
"A forgotten idea is as serious a COMMS failure as a broken phone. Romeo & Julet is the tragedy of undelivered communications. Don't be tragic!"
Equipment
- Always carry phone turned on
- Reactivate phone's ringer after setting to vibrate
- Recharge phone daily & carry charger on trips
- Keep bills paid in advance of cutoffs
COMMS Discipline
- Clarify plans
- Repeat what you hear for confirmation to avoid misinterpretation
- communicate clearly
- RSVP: Regulate rythmn, speed, volume pitch. Incomprehensible voice messages are worthless.
- Acknowledge when you hear from someone so they know that you copied
- Check in periodically to let people know you are on track
- Confirm plans rather than assuming people remember and are on track
- Obtain multiple redundant forms of contact information for all contacts.
- Multiple emails, IM accounts on different services prevent loss of communication from regular network outages
- When you meet new people, add them to a queue to contact
- Queueing people to contact with specific details about them to remember who they are and what you want to tell them.
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Example COMMS Failures
Romeo And Juliet
"Welcome from Mantua: what says Romeo?
Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter."
"Suspecting that we both were in a house
Where the infectious pestilence did reign,
Seal'd up the doors, and would not let us forth;
So that my speed to Mantua there was stay'd."
"Who bare my letter, then, to Romeo?"
"I could not send it,–here it is again,–
Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,
So fearful were they of infection."
"Unhappy fortune! by my brotherhood,
The letter was not nice but full of charge
Of dear import, and the neglecting it
May do much danger."
"Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;
And she, there dead, that Romeo's faithful wife:
I married them; and their stol'n marriage-day
Was Tybalt's dooms-day, whose untimely death
Banish'd the new-made bridegroom from the city,
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
Betroth'd and would have married her perforce
To County Paris: then comes she to me,
And, with wild looks, bid me devise some mean
To rid her from this second marriage,
Or in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her
The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
That he should hither come as this dire night,
To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,
Being the time the potion's force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
Was stay'd by accident, and yesternight
Return'd my letter back. Then all alone
At the prefixed hour of her waking,
Came I to take her from her kindred's vault;
Meaning to keep her closely at my cell,
Till I conveniently could send to Romeo:
But when I came, some minute ere the time
Of her awaking, here untimely lay
The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.
She wakes; and I entreated her come forth,
And bear this work of heaven with patience:
But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;
And she, too desperate, would not go with me,
But, as it seems, did violence on herself."
—Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare
Operation Just Cause
"1990 Comms failure blights SEAL operation: Reveals details of a US Navy commando operation to secure Paitilla airport, SE of Panama City, during Op JUST CAUSE, in order to prevent Gen Noriega's escape by private jet. The SEAL force ran into unexpectedly heavy resistance, and took heavy casualties. It proved unable to communicate with a USAF AC-130 circling the airfield, and thus could not call on it for intelligence or fire support. The SEAL leadership has concluded that "if they had known that 'Just Cause' was compromised", the raiders would have called for AC-130 suppressive fire before approaching the hangar."
—Barbara Starr, Jane's Defence Weekly, Article
Indonesian Massacre of East Timor
"The Indonesian forces carried out a massacre against the East Timorese during the election there - from memory, the Australian security forces were supposed to be there monitoring the election... Anyways, just as the massacre was ramping up, the communications link for the Australian Defence Forces and Canberra inexplicably failed for 26 hours. it was widely rumoured that an "Indonesian Lobby" in canberra had orchestrated the comms failure so that the indonesians could carry out a massacre and prevent the secession of east timor (literally one of the poorest countries in the world). There have been four inquiries trying to ascertain what the hell happened - all of them looked like whitewashes. An inquiry has just been completed and 2 "military intelligence officers have been disciplined for misleading a top-level inquiry" - you wont be surprised to learn that their evidence was key in 'proving' that the comms shutdown was accidental."
—Source
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