With winds that could reach between 177 and 209 kilometers an hour (category 3), Gustav has become a serious threat for everything. Not just for human or any living thing out there but also for inanimate objects like phone cable or cell tower. The Hurricane Katrina, which had happened in 2005 and took down some of US networks installation, has become a great lesson – yet case study – for US wireless carriers to be prepared for this year of Gustav attack.
Thankfully, based on a report by AP, it seems that most of US wireless carriers has settled up some preparation to overcome this nature attack. Verizon Wireless for example, this US second largest carriers has doubling its capacity at regional switching centers to handle a barrage of calls when disaster strikes. At the same time, this New Jersey-based company has also provide their cell site with batteries that will power them for at least eight hours plus some generators that will start to carry on when the batteries run down, and then have fuel for five to seven days. This is also mean that the network will keep on its proper function when main power fails.
On the other side, AT&T has also been ready for this big storm or hurricane. To protect its landline networks on Gulf Coast, this US largest network carrier has even replaced some of their cooper-based cable with the new one that is based on optical fiber. On cell site issue, this US-Apple partner for iPhone distribution has also powered their cell site with generators that will power them for up to 36 hours.
How about Sprint and T-Mobile?
On the same report, AP also mentioned that Sprint has spent $59 million in 2007 to boost its hurricane preparedness. It has installed permanent generators at more than 1,000 additional sites in hurricane-prone areas of Florida – one of Gulf Coast area besides Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
Now saddly speaking, other US wireless carrier, T-Mobile still did not answer this issue immediately. Hmmm, I just want to guess that they’re perhaps more prepared for the launch event of HTC Dream Android aka GPhone, one of 2008 most-anticipated handset after the phenomenal iPhone 3G.
Note:
Cell Site is a term to described the location where the wireless antenna and network communications equipment is placed. A cell site consists of a transmitter/receiver, antenna tower, transmission radios and radio controllers. A cell site is operated by a Wireless Service Provider (WSP).
Source: AP via cellular-news
[...] previous post, I’ve written about the way some of US wireless carriers had took to overcome the impact of Hurricane Gustav over their networks. Well, amongst those four carriers, only T-Mobile did not give their answer [...]