BellSouth braces for new hurricane season

With another Atlantic hurricane season looming June 1, BellSouth is hoping to benefit from lessons learned during the deadly 2005 storm season. A BellSouth official said at a recent network power conference that tight coordination between the company's internal emergency management structure and equipment suppliers will ensure a successful response should disaster strike again this year.

At the Emerson Communications Power Conference held in Cleveland earlier this month, Darrell Cooper, BellSouth senior network vice president of Gulf State operations, outlined the company's response during the aftermath of last year's Hurricane Katrina.

As BellSouth heads into a new storm season, there are still 130,000 customer lines displaced as a result of last year's storm. Katrina rebuilding is still going to be a multi-year, coordinated effort, Cooper said, but it will be an opportunity to provide high-end services by replacing copper cable with fiber.

Cooper, who manages approximately 6000 employees in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, said the company had an unprecedented 33 central offices (COs) damaged or out of service during the disaster, with nine COs totally destroyed.

“We had offices where there was nothing there,” he said. Out of 582 COs, 277 were out of power for a substantial amount of time.

To better cope with future storms, he said the supply chain to the carrier must be strengthened, as the industry's supply chain isn't as strong as it used to be.

“We need not only a plan and the ability to execute it, but also to know who's on first and what to do about it,” he said.

Although 2334 truckloads of network equipment were transported to the area after Hurricane Katrina, Cooper said more emphasis is needed from suppliers to increase short-term levels of component inventory so that crucial network equipment and supplies can be easily shipped to areas in need.

He cited power as the weakest link in the Katrina response and said increased generator capacity and improved logistics could help get the area running again more quickly in the future. Expanding industry collaboration through sharing generator capacity is one way to help. Prolonged flooding in the New Orleans area made transporting diesel fuel for generators tricky last year, and transporting water for building chiller operations was a problem as well. Cooper said fuel cells and alternate energy sources should also be examined to expand options for backup power.

“Power is good, but absolute power is absolutely good,” he said.

Emerson Network Power is currently looking at designating a formal task force to examine ways in which power can be managed in the aftermath of hurricanes or other disasters, a spokesperson for Emerson said.

On the wireless side, Cooper said E911 service needs better reinforcement.

“[Public safety answering points] must have primary and secondary backup plans,” he said, with backups being at least 200 miles from the primary.

Customer service reps (CSRs) were manning the phones during and after last year's hurricane, even though there was nothing that could be done to immediately help customers, Cooper said. He also manned the phones, which gave him a greater understanding of what CSRs go through daily on the job. “It really makes you understand how important service is,” he said.