BlackBerry Black Holes on Capitol Hill

By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers

House and Senate members have a new complaint about Capitol Hill. There are dozens of places where their cellular phones and BlackBerrys don’t work. It’s been an ongoing problem, and areas like the underground tunnels between House and Senate office buildings and the Capitol have been wired for service recently. But in the new U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, where parties caucus and hold secret meetings, service “black holes” have been discovered, and there are mounting demands on con­gres­sional IT officials to close the gaps. “Communication is important there because a lot of us use it,” Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Maryland Democrat, says of the visitor center. “It’s really a high priority.”

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