Rita Seen Doing Less Damage than Katrina

BellSouth Mon. said 183,000 lines in La. remained “potentially affected” by Rita, down from 566,000 on Sun. BellSouth said it didn’t lose any central offices to the storm but said the lines were being affected by loss of commercial electric power. A spokesman said affected lines aren’t necessarily out of service but rather are affected “because it’s not business as usual.” He said there have been few trouble reports so far but because of the massive evacuations the reports aren’t a reliable indicator. SBC didn’t have an estimate of affected lines, but said its Tex. landline phone network endured Hurricane Rita with “limited damage and minimal interruptions to phone and Internet services.” It characterized damage in Houston as “minor,” with most outages involving downed trees that took out the drop line to individual customer premises, rather than major network disruptions.

SBC Mon. said it was still evaluating damage to the Beaumont and Galveston areas where the storm hit harder. Wireless carriers Verizon, Cingular, Sprint/Nextel and T- Mobile said more than 85% of cell sites in Rita’s path in Tex. and La. weathered the storm without service interruptions. They said their infrastructure generally survived intact, with the major service problem being loss of commercial electric power. The carriers said service disruptions were mainly in Beaumont, Galveston and Port Charles in Tex., and Lake Charles, Lafayette and Opalousas in La.

Wireless carriers said the service effects from Hurricane Rita were less than expected, with most of the damage in the Houston area. Sprint Nextel said affected wireline and Internet services for local telephone customers, primarily in parts of suburban Houston and Grimes, Tex., were restored by Sunday evening, and its network in Houston was operating Mon. at 90%. The carrier also said the levee flooding in New Orleans caused by Rita will impede service restoration to parts of that city, but about 70% of Sprint Nextel wireless network was operational in the New Orleans market as of Mon. In Miss., it said it restored more than 95% of coverage.

T-Mobile said its core network in Tex. and La. remained operational during the storm Sat. It said its key network switch in Houston was maintained by onsite generator power during the storm and then was switched to commercial power. T-Mobile reported more than 80% of its cell sites in Tex. and La. affected by the hurricane stayed up. The carrier’s network switch in New Orleans stayed operational during the storm served by commercial power, it said.

Verizon Wireless said about 90% of its cell sites remained operational in the affected areas. It reported service disruptions in the hardest hit areas, including Galveston and the areas to the south of Houston, but said all its store in the Houston area were open Mon.

Cable Customers Affected

About 200,000 cable customers in Tex. and La. can’t get service because of Rita, officials said. At least 45,000 additional customers couldn’t get service at the height of the storm. Time Warner, the largest cable provider in coastal Tex., was hardest hit by the storm in that state. Some 90,000 customers in Port Arthur and Beaumont, near where Rita’s eye made landfall, may be without telecom, cable and electricity, said a Time Warner Cable spokesman: “That area is very hard hit.” It may take as long as 6 weeks for electricity to be restored, he said. TWC has 120 cable crews on standby, ready to begin repairs as soon as conditions permit. It has been able to survey the area only from the air, with early reports indicating substantial structural damage to homes. Technicians have been asked “to bring sleeping bags and the like, because it is a very tough road,” he said.

Cox said it has as many as 100,000 customers who can’t get cable, split 60%-40% between La. communities including Lake Charles, and Tex. cities such as Victoria. “There are areas that are heavily, heavily flooded and wind damaged,” said a Cox spokesman. Compared with Katrina, which knocked out service to hundreds of thousands of Cox customers, Rita’s blow was softer. “It could have been worse… Primarily where we saw flooding was in places close to the Gulf that got the storm surge,” the spokesman said, adding that all except for 2 Cox employees in the area have been accounted for.

Efforts to rebuild systems in the New Orleans area, where Cox is the largest cable operator, were set back by storm surges that flooded some parts of the city for a 2nd time. “This puts us back in the restoration work in terms of however long it takes to pump it out again,” the Cox spokesman said. Comcast, the largest cable provider in the Dallas area, was relatively unaffected by the storm, with no reports of damage.

Public TV stations in Hurricane Rita’s path largely went unscathed, said PBS. There wasn’t a “scratch” to KUHT Corpus Christi, said Edward Caleca, PBS senior vp- technology & operations, adding that he hasn’t communicated with the manager of KUHT Houston, whose phone message says the staff was expected to be back tomorrow (Wed.). La. stations -- KLPB Lafayette, KCTL Lake Charles and WLPB Baton Rouge -- lost power. KLPB and KCTL had wind damage, Caleca said, with KLPB having to clear a uprooted tree so staff could reenter the building. All 3 La. stations are running short of generator fuel, he said, and PBS is trying to help them secure fuel.

FCC Eases Some Rules

The Wireless Bureau extended until Nov. 21 the filing and regulatory deadlines between Sept. 20 and Nov. 20 for wireless licensees in the hurricane-affected areas. Specifically, it said it extended deadlines associated with wireless radio service applications, notifications and reports pursuant to Part 1(f) of the Commission’s rules. The Bureau also provided a list of the FCC- certified frequency coordinators for land mobile and microwave radio operations and their contact information to assist wireless licensees in Tex. and La. as they are fixing or rebuilding their facilities. The Commission also said it will treat all special temporary authority (STA) applications related to Hurricane Rita as “emergency filings” and will process them “as expeditiously as possible.”

The Wireline Bureau said it granted, on its own motion, STA to SBC and its affiliates for 45 days to enable the company to “adjust any facilities to accommodate any damage sustained.” It said “restoration efforts may involve the use of SBC’s… affiliates and may require the routing of traffic across LATA boundaries.” Other carriers in the affected region may also need SBC assistance to route parts of their traffic to non-damaged designated facilities, the Bureau said.

Just days after Hurricane Rita hit the Tex.-La. coast, the FCC response to aiding broadcasters is receiving mostly favorable reviews. “The FCC staff has been very proactive. They got high marks after Katrina and they will get high marks again,” said Michael Schneider, Tex. Assn. of Bcstrs. (TAB) dir.-programs.

For Tex. stations, 2 FCC staffers over the weekend, when the hurricane hit, helped coordinate in providing fuel to the stations and arranging for generators, said TAB’s Exec. Dir. Ann Arnold. “Everybody has reacted better. We had a lot of lead time, so we were more prepared,” Arnold said. The FCC also aided in redirecting calls to aviation authorities to report tower light outages, Arnold said.

Working over the weekend the FCC Media Bureau issued public notices allowing stations to operate and restore communications as needed in areas affected by the hurricane. As in Hurricane Katrina, the FCC said it would expedite special temporary authority requests and allow FM and TV stations to erect temporary antennas without prior FCC permission. The FCC also extended various filing deadlines for those in the disaster area.

Lou Munson, pres. of the La. Assn. of Bcstrs. said it was too soon to tell how much of an impact the FCC actions have had on stations in her state. She has been trying to get in touch with stations to get a better assessment of the situation. “Power is out, I'm the only one here. I'm just trying to get a hold of my members,” she said.

One La. station, Liberty’s KPLC (NBC) Lake Charles, remained on the air. The station evacuated before the storm came on shore, but KPLC staff broadcast and streamed from the break room of a nearby hospital, according to a letter from Liberty Pres. Jim Keelor. The station’s generator never wavered and the microwave dish withstood 100 mph winds, Keelor said.

In Beaumont, Tex., Clear Channel’s 5 stations stayed on the air, Arnold said. Some staffers’ homes were damaged, so many stayed at the station providing non-stop coverage until the hurricane passed, she said. The only station that lost a tower that TAB was aware of was KWUD(AM) in Woodville.