Cellphone Outages Exacerbate Planned Outages in California
As if proactive power shutoffs are not enough for California residents to endure, a recent blackout was accompanied by widespread cellphone outages at the same time, making a bad situation even worse.� It happened during the recent Kincade fire – Marin county lost nearly 60% of its 280 cellphone towers, and the surrounding counties lost 20% of their towers.� Some residents even lost landline connectivity.
What Triggered the Cellphone Outages?
The widespread cellphone outages enraged both residents and government officials alike, because several days’ notice was given prior to the planned outage.� Not only did this compromise safety, but it also compromised fire fighters’ ability to battle the blaze because they were forced to communicate via radio.� It could have been even more precarious if the evacuation notifications were not sent out prior to the network outage.
In what amounts to a vicious cycle, the cause of the cellphone outages was the power outage.� According to a spokesperson from Verizon, the company ?has generators and backup batteries at most of its cell towers? but this seems like an optimistic statement given that most counties saw between 20-60% of its towers go offline.�
Similar statements were made by spokespeople from AT&T and T-Mobile.� AT&T said the company ?deployed hundreds of additional generators? and were working 24 hours a day to keep the generators online.� T-Mobile claimed to have ?deployed and refueled? generators at over 260 locations.
Still, there are no regulations that require carriers to have backup power for cell towers, which hurts the reliability of these networks.� Simply put, despite the rhetoric from the carriers, they were not adequately prepared.
Proper regulatory action would require the carriers in high-risk areas to have backup power at every tower that lasts 48-72 hours, and provide reporting to document which towers go offline.� Legislation has already been introduced to mandate such requirements.� Let’s hope the legislation passes, because cellphone outages are the last thing people need to deal with on top of planned outages.
