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@goo**spew wrote:

What do you mean all communication was down? Surely he had a mobile phone or could have found an internet cafe to contact his mum? I don't believe the London bombs affected communications infrastructure and I can't imagine the authorities would have restricted phone access at a time like this.

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London Bombings, 2005

Transport and telecoms disruption

Vodafone reported that its mobile telephone network reached capacity at about 10am on the day of the bombings, and it was forced to initiate emergency procedures to prioritise emergency calls (ACCOLC, the 'access overload control'). Other mobile phone networks also reported failures.

The BBC speculated that the telephone system was shut down by security services to prevent the possibility of mobile phones being used to trigger bombs. Although this option was considered, it became clear later that the intermittent unavailability of both mobile and landline telephone systems was due only to excessive usage.

ACCOLC was activated only in a 1 km (0.6 mi) radius around Aldgate Tube Station because key emergency personnel did not have ACCOLC-enabled mobile phones. The communications failures during the emergency sparked discussions to improve London's emergency communications system.