PAST HURRICANES TEACH FLORIDA CARRIERS A LESSON

There were very few people along the Gulf Coast and Florida who came away from last year's biggest hurricanes — Wilma, Katrina and Rita — unscathed, but solid preparation kept the damage at a minimum for some telcos and their customers.

The 2005 hurricane season probably was the worst for many in the region. But in some ways, living in the path of disaster for so long has taught network operators in these areas important lessons about how to prepare, how to react in the aftermath and what really matters most. For example, the network, employees and customers of Vortex Broadband Communications, a wireline and broadband wireless operator in West Palm Beach, Fla., were in the path of Hurricane Wilma last October.

“We had a pretty bad hurricane season in 2004, so we were about as prepared for the worst as we could be in 2005,” said Todd Shepherd, founder and president of Vortex. “Wilma by far was the first real test of that. Past hurricanes have taught us that when we hear of a storm, we go into alert mode and hunker down. Every storm is different and shows you something about the strengths and weaknesses of your network.”

He added that the company's first priority in the wake of Wilma “was the safety and well-being of our employees and their families.”

Though Vortex's coverage area didn't receive a direct hit from Wilma, Shepherd said there were sustained winds of about 125 mph during the storm, and damage affecting Vortex's network included 65 cuts to the company's backhaul fiber facilities between West Palm Beach and Miami. As soon as the storm passed, many areas were hit with power outages that kept Vortex from restoring some network facilities. In the interim, the company sent teams to as many customer sites as possible to be sure that Vortex gear wasn't damaged and would function when power came back up.

“About 85% of our customers were restored within two days,” Shepherd said, adding the company's wireless facilities gave it a quick-restoration advantage that some telcos in the region didn't have. “I think because of that, we actually gained 20 or 30 new customers in the weeks after the hurricane.”

Likewise, CapRock Communications has started to tap into the increasingly busy disaster recovery business, helping both rural telcos and enterprise customers respond to hurricane damage throughout the South in the last two years. Like Vortex, it learned from experience.

“In 2004, with many hurricanes in Florida, I think we weren't quite prepared for the volume of calls we received, especially from customers in need of temporary call center facilities,” said David Myers, vice president of marketing and product management at CapRock.

In response, the company has now created the DR 250, a trailer that operates as a mobile communications center. After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit points along the Gulf Coast last August and September, CapRock deployed about 175 trailers over a span of about two months. “A lot of those are still in service a lot longer than we expected they would be,” Myers said.

He added that one of the new lessons learned from the most recent hurricanes is that during the aftermath of major storms, many customers are looking for a lifeline communications solution that will work regardless of power availability. Myers said CapRock plans to create a new unit that packs its own generator.