Weathering the Storm

Weather disasters zap power, damage equipment and increase traffic. No matter how severe the conditions, you don't want to be caught off guard. A few downed sites can strain your network. To prevent a system outage, you must prepare your sites and implement a network-management plan that will expedite the recovery process. You can't change the weather, but you can better prepare yourself and your network.

PREPARING FOR THE WORSTAccording to Pat Collier, BellSouth Mobility public relations manager, being prepared means designing and building your sites with Mother Nature in mind.

To prepare for hurricane season, BellSouth tops off generator and vehicle fuel tanks and moves extra generators into staging areas. Backup generators, supplies of cable, wire, antennas and other equipment always are on hand. Generators already are in place at 70% of the carrier's Florida sites and at 90% of Florida's eastern coastal sites.

When disaster strikes, BellSouth Mobility adds capacity for increased traffic with cellular on wheels (COWs). It has 20 COWs in Florida that it can install temporarily, and portable generators and fuel tanks for sites that need them. You can use large COWs, which sit on flatbed trucks, or you can use a smaller version, cellular on a light truck (COLT).

"Generators on wheels are very helpful because if you have a problem with the system, you can go over and install another one parallel to that one and start getting service without power or preparation," said Gerry Caballero, Cellular One Puerto Rico construction manager.

Caballero said Cellular One Puerto Rico prepares for disaster physically and mentally. First, sites are designed to withstand weather, namely hurricanes.

"We designed the system very rugged in terms of wind load for towers," he explained. "We put special emphasis that every tower we build can afford the load that we are putting on top of it."

The carrier stores antennas and mounts, microwave dishes, transmission lines and spare generators for backup cell-site power in its warehouse.

Cellular One Puerto Rico's emergency-management committee, which includes representatives from each department, meets several times prior to hurricane season to discuss recovery strategies such as how they'll contact one another in a disaster, Caballero said.

He suggested establishing good relations with local government and business entities that can assist you in emergencies. For example, if you need access to sites, you may need to borrow equipment from the local government. You also can get vital information on road closings and conditions.

But service agreements with suppliers are equally important. Caballero said vendors give Cellular One Puerto Rico priority when it needs emergency help or services.

Having all of these variables in place before a disaster means faster recovery.

"We have been able to recover very quickly because we have the resources and materials available, so it's only a minor effort from our people who are required to get the system working," he said.

HURRICANE HORRORSTo prepare for hurricanes, Cellular One Puerto Rico keeps its diesel tank full and revises power generators and cell sites. The carrier also ensures there is no loose material around the sites.

Technicians are based in different locations around the island so they can reach critical sites. They also plan how they will meet when something occurs and follow predefined instructions before they do anything.

According to Gigi Ramirez, Cellular One Puerto Rico public relations manager, hurricane predictions help, but it's hard to know where exactly a storm will hit.

"(Hurricane Georges) ended up splitting the whole island in two, and it virtually affected 100% of the island," she said. "It was a hard hurricane to work with."

During Hurricane Georges, which hit Puerto Rico last September, more than 490,000 landlines were down or had no intra-island long-distance service. The three wireless carriers, including Cellular One Puerto Rico, suffered major network damage. The wind damaged most of Cellular One Puerto Rico's microwave dishes. If a microwave dish is unaligned, the microwave path and service are interrupted.

"We made an evaluation -- what was the performance of the system and what was the degradation of the system," Caballero said. "Then we decided what were the critical sites that were more affected and which ones needed to be restored the quickest."

From its network-management center, Cellular One Puerto Rico could see exactly which sites were affected and when. Technicians actually drafted the recovery plan as the hurricane bore down on the island. As soon as the wind allowed, the carrier dispatched technicians. According to Ramirez, 85% of the system was down the morning after the hurricane, and 75% was up in about three days; 90% was restored in less than a week.

"One of the big challenges that we had after the hurricane was not merely how to restore the system, but how to maintain (the cell sites) because our system depends more on microwave than landline, and it works like a chain: If one side fails, maybe a couple of sides fail behind that one," Caballero said.

Because electricians didn't return to some areas for months, Cellular One Puerto Rico used generators to maintain its sites. The carrier's traffic demand and sales broke records immediately and for months after Georges.

BellSouth Mobility felt Georges' wrath in the Florida Keys. To maintain service, the carrier rolled in two COWs. Collier said BellSouth Mobility was the only carrier that remained on-line continuously during the hurricane.

Collier said generators and COWs "saved the day," because landline was down and there was no other way to communicate. The carrier's local relationships enabled it to reach essential sites. Georges forced road closings in the Keys, but the National Guard escorted BellSouth to its sites.

BellSouth Mobility's system weathered the storm and the additional traffic it produced. According to Marta Casas-Celaya, BellSouth's area director of corporate and external affairs, the carrier deployed additional equipment that tripled capacity to accommodate increased traffic. At peak times, more than 5,000 calls per hour were made from the Keys.

FIRE & ICEBellSouth Mobility took advantage of its disaster preparedness last summer when devastating fires ran rampant through Florida. Collier said no sites were lost, but they were threatened.

"The firemen needed to communicate and wanted to keep their phones working, so they were especially paying attention to keep the fires down at those sites," she said.

It was such a dangerous situation and the recovery effort was so large that the carrier used three or four COWs in the Orlando, FL, area to accommodate additional traffic.

Smoke did get into sites' air conditioning units, Collier said, but changing out the filters solved the problem. That was the extent of the damage.

"Sites are pretty much concrete and gravel so they're not inclined to burn," she said.

Ice can be a more formidable foe, as most carriers serving the Northeast are reminded every winter. In January, crippling ice storms left massive power and landline outages for nearly two weeks, affecting millions in the Northeast.

Jim Baase, Frontier Cellular vice president of operations, said the Watertown and Plattsburg, NY, areas were hit hard with power outages.

"We had increased traffic because landline was down, plus there were a lot of crews that came in to help repair the facilities, and we got a lot of traffic from them," he said.

Four inches of ice covered Frontier's towers, and at one point 33 cell sites were without power, Baase said. But the carrier was able to get them up and running within 24 hours and increase channel capacity by 80% to 90%.

According to Baase, Frontier, which manages 34,000 square miles with 5.5 million POPs in upstate New York, must prepare for two or three service-affecting storms every winter. First, Frontier installs fixed generators at hub sites. It also can dispatch 20 mobile generators and has agreements with companies that rent generators, allowing the carrier "first dibs," Baase said. Frontier stocks parts including Lynx radios for unlicensed microwave in its warehouse. It deploys a COW on a trailer to damaged sites.

"(The COW has) a 2 T-span microwave radio, and we do both analog and digital on it," he said. "The capacity is limited by the 2 T-span microwave, but we could get up to 70 to 80 channels, depending on the digital-to-analog mix."

But sometimes just getting to the site is the hard part. Frontier has four rural service areas, stretching from the foothills of the Appalachians to the Adirondacks. It uses three snowmobiles and two all-terrain vehicles to reach sites in mountainous areas.

"If we've got a site we need to get to, we find local contractors or our trucks have plows as well," Baase said. "Having a snowmobile to take a generator up to the top of a mountain helps us. Snowmobiles in the winter are almost an essential."

Another essential, according to Baase, is good relationships with utilities and telcos. During the ice storm, Baase said Bell Atlantic worked diligently with Frontier to ensure it had the facilities it needed to make quick repairs and restore service.

"We can't ever be fully prepared," he said. "We can just make sure that we have adequate backup power and a way to bypass or work with the telco to get additional facilities."

WEATHER OR NOTThe best preparations include establishing an emergency communications plan, making COWs and generators available, keeping in touch with local emergency relief organizations, and reinforcing your infrastructure.

Cellular One Puerto Rico's Caballero advocates implementing a disaster plan, but said it cannot possibly prepare you for everything.

"No matter how prepared you are, you are going to make good use of your intuition and creative thinking," he said. "Even though you cannot be ready for everything, if you are prepared and you have a plan, it will work, and it will pay you back when an emergency comes."

When disaster strikes, you want to re-establish service as soon as possible.

Cellular One Puerto Rico's network emergency plan was put in effect 48 hours before Hurricane Georges' expected arrival. Through the use of its network-management center, the system reported damages as they happened. By the end of the storm, the carrier already had traced a plan and dispatched technicians.

The carrier credited the speed of its recovery to dedicated employees, an effective emergency plan and the real-time monitoring capabilities of its network-management software.

The carrier implemented Glenayre Options' basic operating system and traffic-trending tool into its network-management center in 1997. Because its coverage area is in the path of frequent tropical storms, Cellular One Puerto Rico wanted the capability to build a recovery plan while a storm actually was happening. The software enabled it to pinpoint where the hurricane disabled both microwave and cellular transmission and create an effective recovery plan to restore service.

According to Steve Shapiro, president & general manager, Cellular One Puerto Rico was able to monitor the storm minute by minute as it moved across the island.

"While the storm was exiting the west end of the island, our personnel were already being dispatched to begin recovery work on the east end," he said.

The hurricane caused nearly $500,000 in damages to Cellular One Puerto Rico's sites. But the carrier restored service to more than 90% of its coverage area in less than one week.