Telecom carriers Tues. continued cleanup and service restoration ...
Telecom carriers Tues. continued cleanup and service restoration efforts in southern Fla. and continued assessing the damage caused by Hurricane Frances. They also were keeping a wary eye out for tropical storm Ivan, building in the Atlantic. BellSouth said…
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Frances knocked out 775,000 lines, about 13.1% of its 5.9 million Fla. lines. BellSouth said 45% of the downed lines, 343,000, were in the counties hardest hit by the hurricane -- Indian River, Martin, Palm Beach and St. Lucie. Orange and Brevard counties were next hardest hit, with 209,000 lines lost. The rest of the outages were scattered across Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties. BellSouth said it brought in 400 repair technicians from other states to help in the restoration effort. BellSouth said repair work was being affected by downed trees and structures, downed poles and lack of electric power. It said crews were working 12-hour shifts. BellSouth said its crews also were working to replenish backup power supplies at its central offices and remote switches. Sprint said it lost about 175,000 land lines and has dispatched extra crews to make repairs. Comcast said its phone service in Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe Counties was affected but gave no details. Comcast said it was able to find trouble spots on its network, but not the drops to individual premises. It urged customers to contact it if their drops were severed. Sprint also said its wireless service was impaired by Frances but gave no estimate of how many sites went out. Sprint said it would give wireless customers who lost service because of the storm a 10% credit on their monthly recurring charge if they contact the company. It also will credit roaming charges customers incur because of Frances. Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless said they each lost about 15% of their cell sites to the storm. Verizon Wireless said it was hit hardest in the Orlando area, Vero Beach and the barrier islands off the coast. Verizon Wireless said it had deployed 28 mobile transmission units on trucks and trailers to temporarily fill in coverage gaps from the cell sites that went down in the storm, and to boost network capacity in the areas where residents and rescue workers must rely on cellphones. It said it will bring more portable units into affected areas the next few days. Cingular said it deployed 150 emergency generators to support cell sites that were running out of battery power and may bring in up to 400 more generators from other states. In addition, Cingular said it has 40 mobile transmitter units to replace damaged cell sites and expand capacity where needed. Cingular said efforts to restore normal service were hampered by the widespread utility power outages.