FCC Investigating After East Coast Quake Cripples Cell Services
Wireless services were disrupted in much of the Washington area after a 5.9-magnitude Virginia-based earthquake rocked the East Coast early Tuesday afternoon. The FCC was investigating network problems. The agency remained functional, though employees were given the option of taking administrative leave for the reminder of the day, a spokesman said. Parts of the Pentagon, White House and Capitol were evacuated. The U.S. Geological Survey warned of possible aftershocks.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
"Today’s earthquake caused significant disruption to cell service in the affected area,” said an FCC spokesman. “The FCC is in contact with the relevant carriers. We are also conducting a thorough assessment of the outages to determine appropriate next steps to improve communications services during emergencies.”
T-Mobile’s services were disrupted but engineers were on top of it, a spokeswoman said. The carrier’s calling and texting services were down immediately after the quake, though email service appeared to be available. The crush of phone calls also made it hard for some customers to get through. The volume of calls was extremely high on Verizon Wireless networks but phone service and other wireless services are available, a spokesman said. There’s “a mass-calling event” in the areas where the earthquake was felt, a Sprint Nextel spokeswoman said. But there were no reported impacts on physical Sprint networks, she said. There was no infrastructure damage but the network continued to see heavy call volumes, an AT&T spokesman said. The wireless industry’s infrastructure appeared to be intact, but because many wireless consumers were using the networks, “we are experiencing higher than normal traffic” CTIA said. There can be delays during high volume instances and CTIA encouraged consumers to text and email until volume returned to normal.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency also asked the public to use email or text messages if possible, except in cases of emergency, so emergency officials could continue to receive and respond to urgent calls, she said. The earthquake left public safety able to communicate only via dedicated land-mobile radios, said the Public Safety Alliance. Commercial wireless systems were crippled, but D-Block allocation would give public safety its own networks, helping to alleviate the problem, it said.
The FCC and its operations were fully functional, a spokesman said. The FCC conducted a visual evaluation of stress points and damages in the building and none were identified, he said. Employees were returning to work Tuesday afternoon, he said. Telecom law firms and companies like Bingham McCutchen and Windstream evacuated their Washington offices temporarily.