Cingular Wireless Beefing Up Towers for Hurricane Season

[southerngale]

Good news for Cingular customers in hurricane-prone areas. Of course we hope they don't have to test this. Hopefully other companies will follow suit too...I don't use Cingular. For those of you who were trying to get calls out after a hurricane, or those trying to get calls in, you know what a nightmare it was. You could try to make a call for hours on end, and with some luck, find a hot spot and get a call out, then hope it didn't drop you before you said what you had to say. Both ways for me...I was desperately trying to reach people after Katrina, then after Rita, I was desperately trying to make calls myself. Most of the time, it didn't work.



Cingular Wireless is making preparations for the coming hurricane season. The company says they have prepared the nation’s largest digital voice and data network to weather this season’s storms.

Cingular has outfitted cell sites in hurricane-prone areas with permanent or portable generators in the event of power outages.

Cingular says it also has more than 50 self-contained mobile cell sites that can be towed or driven into an area to provide extra call capacity or to restore communications following a disaster.

[MiamiensisWx]

Is Florida included in the areas they will implement this planning action?

[southerngale]

I don't know...it just said hurricane-prone areas, so including Florida would be logical. Sorry, I forgot the link. It was from a Beaumont news station, but it doesn't say it's locally only.

http://www.kbtv4.tv/news/default.asp?mo ... s&id=11307

[SurvivedIvan]

I hope that this includes the AL gulf coast too b/c I use Cingular Wireless.

[SouthFloridawx]

I hope other cell phone companies step and do the same thing. It would make life so much easier for all people who are affected. It would allow emergency operations to be helped also because now people can use thier cell phone to call in an emergency after the storm if thier telephone lines are down.

[jasons2k]

That's awesome, thanks for the info.

One thing I do know is that often, multiple carriers do share the same towers. I dunno if they will actually share the generators but maybe so?

[LaPlaceFF]

They always put out this press release right before hurricane season.

["Ice"]

In Pensacola, I remember hearing a few month's ago that Gulf Power was replacing the old telephone polls in hopes of less telephone polls and lines down during hurricanes..

[LSU_Weatherguy]

here is the press statement directly from cingular
http://cingular.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=pageC

[HurryKane]

Here's my recommendation: when a cane hits, forget calling and start texting. It was the ONLY way my friends, family, coworkers and I were able to get any communication between those of us who had scattered across the southeast via cell phones for the first two weeks or so.

[MGC]

Those generators Cingular plans on installing are going to use a lot of fuel. I hope they have a few tanker trucks on standby to fuel them up. Hurrykane is correct, we could only text after Katrina. Sorta crude but at least you could get a message out/in......MGC

[hurricanetrack]

You know you can pre-save text messages in most cases. I know I can with my Sprint phone. Then you can send out an immediate "hey everyone, we're ok!" or "hey everyone, can you send a boat, preferably an air boat, to 116 Main Street!!!!"

Seriously, now is a good time to store a few pre-written text messages. What's nice too is that text messaging is store and forward- so if the tower is out, even for a minute or a few hours, the message will go and wait until the tower and its data connection come back up- then BAM! the message gets sent. I did this in Gulfport immediately after Katrina- data is easier for cellular anyway- it's a different spectrum altogether. Heck, I might ask Mike Watkins to have one of my Sprint engineers to come on talkin tropics one night. No matter who your carrier is, hearing how things work from an expert might help us all to know how to deal with a hurricane in our wireless world.

[Audrey2Katrina]

The pre-written text messages is a good idea. I also have Cingular so I hope this is true... my cell (text mostly for the first two-weeks after the storm) was my only connection to the outside world!

A2K

[JPmia]

Most of the other major cell phone companies are doing this as well. Nextel-Sprint and Verizon are adding generators and battery systems to their sites. They have been doing this for a couple of years now. However, it is not just the power systems that fail in hurricanes. Antennas that are twistied, removed, or otherwise damaged can cause a site to fail and phone calls not to go through.

[LaBreeze]

I know what you mean Audrey2Katrina - I have Cingular and it was my only means of communication for weeks after Rita. Let's hope that we don't have to use it again in this capacity any time soon.

[seaswing]

Is Florida included in the areas they will implement this planning action?

Florida would be the 'original' hurricane prone state!

[stormtruth]

More microwave radiation for Gulf coast folks.

[Lindaloo]

My Sprint phone lost service during and three weeks after the storm. Cellular South had limited service. Cingular (at least here) never lost service even during the storm.

[HurryKane]

Lindaloo, were you on the coast for the duration of the storm and aftermath? Just curious about the cell phone logistics thing. Those of us who had evacuated and had Cingular couldn't get calls through because the call would try to go down to a 228-homed cell tower and fail, although text worked.

It was explained to me that when you made a cell call to someone with a 228 number, the call would try to go through coast towers first and since most were down or not working, it wouldn't go through no matter if the person you were trying to call was on on the coast or evacuated somewhere else with working towers. I could call non-228 and non-Louisiana numbers with no problem.

When I got back to D'head two weeks later, I had cell service but it dropped calls like crazy. The surprising thing to me was when I got all eight bars of Cingular signal in Michoud at the end of September

[Rainband]

I hope that helps to improve service during and after a storm.