Post-Sandy Wireless Outages Add Insult to Injury

As the East Coast recovers from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, all utilities are being pushed to their limits. However, the response of the mobile operators has been such that we might see some regulatory changes come about that would require better steps to increase reliability and ensure accountability. We're now eight days after the storm, and areas of Manhattan are still suffering service outages. The carriers have countered that such steps are unnecessary as it is in their best interest to provide reliable service, but with the FCC estimating that roughly a third of U.S. households "cutting the cord" and depending on cellular services rather than traditional landlines, it might be time for the regulators to step in.

Unfortunately, I had a front-row seat for Sandy as my house is situated roughly 200 feet from Brosewere Bay on the south shore of Long Island. While the morning storm surge came and went without incident (we don't consider sea water in the street an "incident"), the same cannot be said for the evening surge.

We knew the high tide was predicted for 8:52 p.m., and by 7:30 the water had already reached the level it had in the morning surge. For the next hour and a half we watched it march up the driveway until we had about 18 inches of water sloshing around the sides of the house. While we got 14 inches in the garage totaling one of our cars, the water level never breached the doorsills so the interior stayed dry.

Along the way the power went out which killed the heat, hot water, Internet, and with it, my cable phone line. We do have one traditional Verizon wired telephone line, but in this case "old reliable" turned out to be "less reliable." Fortunately it was a warm night so we were able to stay in the house comfortably enough.

Morning gave us a chance to assess the damage and we found unimaginable piles of stuff that had floated into our yard and stayed there when the water receded. Along with reeds, lawn furniture cushions, and railroad ties, we had about 50 feet of floating dock that had to be broken down and carried out. Compared to what many of our friends suffered when the water got into their houses, we had a cakewalk.

Without power, stress starts to get to you. With both the cable and Verizon phone lines out, we were down to cellular as our only communications option, but we all got the "No Service" indicator on our phones. Interestingly, texts got through on a rather random basis. So the only way to communicate with people was to get in the car and go see them. With dozens of trees down, you had to figure out which circuitous routes were open. I wound up helping our town's Mayor and one of the town Trustees and some guy with a chain saw chop up and drag away enough of three downed trees to open up the street in front of my house.

The scariest incident was the house next door to ours that had a one-inch gas pipe venting to the atmosphere (that house used to have a hot tub with a gas heater), and we had to run around looking for any cell phone that could get a signal so we could call the fire department.

Fortunately my in-laws have a condo in a town 20 minutes away that had power so we wound up sleeping there for three nights; the power came back Thursday afternoon. So you basically had people who went largely untouched (though they were worrying about what was happening to the rest of us), folks like us that had what I'd consider "moderate inconvenience" (though "work" was essentially out of the question), and poor souls who lost rooms, cars, and in some cases whole houses - about 200,000 of them on Long Island still don't have power.

So what should the mobile operators be doing? The industry claims that installing battery back-up at all sites would be prohibitively expensive, and unless the batteries were elevated, this strategy would have been ineffective in the flood conditions we experienced. The normal strategy for back-up power is the operators stock a limited number of back-up generators they can tow out to cell sites and get them back on line.

Well, maybe that's not good enough. Lots of entities are having to rethink their back-up strategies like NYU Langone Medical Center, that was forced to evacuate all 215 patients; the facility abuts the East River. We don't live in a third world country, and the after effects of storms like Sandy and Katrina back in 2005 have demonstrated our rather mediocre level of preparedness.

I'm writing this on election day, and the likelihood of more stringent reliability and preparedness requirements might well hinge on the outcome. The FCC under Chairman Julius Genachowski has shown a keen interest in mobile networks and demonstrated a willingness to take steps that have not been favored by the operators (you can ask AT&T and T-Mobile about that). A Republican administration might be "friendlier" to the operators, but if the Democrats stay in power, the operators might find themselves investing in more than a few Sears "Die Hards."