Armed & Ready

Every wireless carrier faces service interruptions. Usually the affected area and the length of disruption are small. Sometimes they are not. Consider the May 1998 satellite malfunction when almost the entire U.S. paging industry experienced an outage. This event is instructive to carriers in helping them plan what to do when their service is interrupted. It also highlights the importance of getting the network back up and running again as quickly as possible.

TYPES OF OUTAGES Most wireless communications disruptions are short-lived, are confined to a specific geographic region and can be attributed to interruptions in electrical power to the sites. Carriers often prepare for these situations with backup power systems, such as batteries and generators.

The satellite failure the paging industry experienced could be classified as a network problem, since an element in the network failed. These outages happen, but they generally do not affect millions of customers on several different networks. It is hard to track these episodes, considering carriers do not want to bring attention to them.

Natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes or tornadoes often take out service to a wireless network and increase the need for wireless capacity when other communications are down or overworked. Carriers often provide phones to emergency service agencies to aid in their communications.

In 1994, GTE Wireless, then known as Cellular One, established a relationship with the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency to provide supplemental wireless communications in disaster situations. The carrier dedicated a supply of phones, which was put to work when tornadoes destroyed portions of downtown Nashville in 1998. GTE Wireless gave more than 60 phones to Metro Fire and other city organizations that did not have electricity and wireline phones. The organizations coordinated cleanup using the wireless phones.

Man-made emergencies also can disrupt service. US West Wireless experienced this situation in Northeast Denver in March 1999 when an extensive wireline-phone-cable cut affected 12,000 customers, said Veron Rygh, US West Wireless network operations center (NOC) manager. The cell site servicing the area was out of service so the carrier installed a point-to-point microwave radio at a neighboring site to reroute traffic in and out of the area.

Rygh said the carrier would typically take one or two days to install this radio, but it installed it in four hours. In addition, US West provided 40 wireless handsets to emergency services, a hospital and people with severe health conditions to use during the wireline phone outage, which lasted for days.

An unexpected need for increased capacity doesn't always coincide with a disaster. Typically, a large event planned well in advance gives you the time you need to add capacity to the surrounding area. But in January 1999, when the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl, there wasn't much time before a victory parade in downtown Denver. About 250,000 people attended. Rygh said US West formulated a plan to add capacity to the downtown area. Within hours, it added new hardware to the cells and redefined software in the switch. The available call volume increased by 50% to 75% for the event.

WHEN AN OUTAGE OCCURS When service is disrupted, US West Wireless has three groups that spring into action, Rygh said. The restoration bridge, a group of people that includes the vendor, works to resolve the problem. The communications bridge includes people within the company that inform everyone of the outage's status. The support bridge includes resources and capital that, if required, are activated during a recovery mission.

When there is time to anticipate a disaster, such as a hurricane, GTE Wireless implements its disaster-readiness plan in stages as the storm reaches certain milestones, said Susan Asher, GTE Wireless spokeswoman.

"On a local level, we have a disaster-recovery team that works with local, state and national public-service people to ensure that we provide the support needed," she said. "The GTE NOC in Dallas serves as a second tier of disaster support. When a storm hits, the center takes over the monitoring of the system while the local people are riding out the storm."

In large outages, such as the May 1998 satellite failure, carriers relay the message on a more public level. Scott Baradell, PageNet vice president of communications, said his company sends out press releases and places information on the Internet during such outages.

"(Customers) didn't care who was responsible," Baradell said of the paging outage. "It was definitely PageNet's duty to get the information out."However, mos t outages are smaller in nature. Baradell said in those cases, PageNet notifies critical accounts so they can put back-up plans in place.

Customers generally find out about the extent and cause of an outage when they call to find out why service is out in a particular area. But how do you notify your CSRs? Carriers use a variety of communications. Rygh said US West uses e-mail, voice mail and reader boards to notify reps of outages. When outages occur, the reader boards in the customer-care center flash a message from the NOC naming the affected market, the customer effect and the estimated time to restore service.

US West Wireless also uses a system called Wildcat. When the network detects a service-affecting alarm, Wildcat activates a GUI. When customers call to report trouble, CSRs can use the information to explain that engineers are working on the problem. In the future, the company also plans to use the data-mail feature in its PCS handsets to deliver these messages.

PageNet is centralizing its customer-service and back-office processes, which will tie the technology infrastructure to the customer-service system electronically, Baradell said. It has converted about 25% of the customer base to this system and expects to convert the rest by year-end.

Baradell said PageNet CSRs currently do not have access to an outage map and trouble-ticket locations. The new system will automate the information flow, making it faster and more precise when customers call in.

GTE Wireless uses a voice-response system to inform customers of emergency situations, Asher said. For example, if the outage is in Nashville, it records a message that plays for Nashville customers only, which lets customers know the carrier is working to fix it.

CRISIS CLEANUP When a crisis is over, it is not time to relax; it's time to prepare for the next possible situation. Following each deployment of GTE Wireless' disaster-recovery plan, the carrier holds a review to determine whether it can improve its effectiveness. The carrier also has worked on disaster drills with local public-safety agencies to prepare for possible crises.

Rygh said US West Wireless learned several things from its different outages and disaster-recovery implementations:

* Creativity is necessary; field engineers know the network and must be well equipped with test equipment and spare packs.

* CDMA technology has made capacity growth much easier than other technologies.

* Teamwork between the company's wireless and wireline divisions is essential.

How you deal with a crisis can affect the situation at hand as well as your future. If you deal with a situation quickly and effectively in the eyes of customers and potential customers, their positive feedback will increase your positive reputation and, in turn, your subscriber base. If you handle a situation poorly, negative feedback will be detrimental.

During the May 1998 satellite malfunction, paging carriers focused on resolving the situation as quickly as possible, and provided updates about how many customers' service they had restored. AirTouch Communications, for example, did not charge customers during the outage. AirTouch estimated the 2-day outage cost it about $2 million, but the goodwill it sent via credits, consistent communications with customers and by resolving the situation is priceless. You can't tally the revenues you will continue to receive by deftly handling such situations.