They had every opportunity to improve the situation by having the nation guard present. They were offered and declined. The handful of capitol police could be overwhelmed by a Walmart super-sale stampede and it was not fair to make them absorb the known incoming assault. That is why it does not surprise me that the police let many of the invasion in without resistance on one side of the building. Those that resisted were easily overwhelmed. If anything I feel bad for those cops that were put in harms way.

I would assume that the circumstances around the deployment of National Guard are being looked at, also. The article didn't comment on this, they were talking about satellite phones. And satellite phones would still be useful in situations, such as what happened January 6, even if the national guard were present.

Maybe it would be useful for a minute to the congressional folks on the upper floors. I would be surprised if either satellite or plain cellular would work at all in the hallway effectively a tunnel they were escorted to. Maybe cellular-over-wifi would work. Adding to this every office in the capitol building has a hard wired multi-line desk speaker phone.

All logistical communications would be by UHF trunked and P25 encrypted 2-way radios by capitol police assuming they were on the tactical channels. Their radios can also operate point-to-point without the need for a repeater. Politicians would be instructed to end their call and "Come this way".

Where cellphones would have been useful is if everyone started recording video and put their phones in shirt pockets to act like body cameras.

I assume the security folks wanted to make them (the representatives) more secure in general, including having better communications, based on a review of January 6, and in some scenarios satellite phones would be useful. Like if they had to be evacuated, etc. Do you disagree?

I still think the phones are for something else entirely.

So the phone may have been prompted by January 6, but were not necessarily intended for January 6 scenarios. For example, I assume these phones might come in handy if hackers or saboteurs took out or jammed the cell phone network while terrorists somewhere set off a tactical nuke, etc. It seems remiss not to have the infrastructure set up before hand. Senators using police radios may not be as secure as having communications prepared for them in advance, even if not perfect. Just in case.

Is that what you meant when you said that you thought the phones were for something else?