New State Plans Needed to Encourage Telecom, Electric Utility Communications in Disasters, Commissioners Say

Due to the number of hurricanes that hit central Florida between 2004 and 2005, the Public Service Commission there overhauled its approach to responding to disasters, said Commissioner Lisa Edgar. Four hurricanes in 2004 resulted in more than 10 million customer outages and restoration costs of more than $1 billion, said Edgar. The three hurricanes in 2005, including Hurricane Katrina, meant electric outages for 5 million customers, and 1 million telecom access lines were affected, she said. Almost $1 billion was spent again in 2005 to restore electric and telecom services, said Edgar. To fix these problems, the PSC started holding an annual hurricane preparedness briefing and created an inspection program to help utilities stand up to these disasters, she said. “We know that the cycle in 2004 and 2005 will happen again and we know that we need to stay vigilant to make sure our residents get the top service.” Utilities do annual training and pre-storm drills to prepare, and wood poles have been reinforced with concrete, she said.

Back-up generators are becoming a bigger part of AT&T’s strategy to make sure wireless systems don’t go down in an emergency, said Chris Boyer, AT&T Services assistant vice president-global public policy. In Oklahoma, the company has portable cell on wheels (COWs) trucks to provide people with access to wireless, said Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Dana Murphy. In a state with frequent tornadoes, insurance company employees need to be able to use their cellphones when they're surveying the damage, said Murphy. Half of AT&T’s cell sites in Florida have permanent back-up generators to provide wireless service immediately, and more sites are getting generators, said Edgar.

Wireless services worked well in New York following the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, said Idaho Public Utilities Commissioner Paul Kjellander, speaking on behalf of New York Public Service Commissioner Gregg Sayre who did not attend the NARUC meeting. “These services performed well, and 911 services were perceived to be a relative success because the calls were routed and got through to the tower.” Verizon decided to bring a fiber network to Fire Island when it realized that “the wireless solution was not comparable in terms of data,” said Kjellander. “By Memorial Day, thousands of residents will have access to services that they have never had before through fiber.” Electric and telecom problems after Sandy occurred because there was not a “communication plan to meet the needs of customers,” said Kjellander.

The concern about natural and man-made disasters has led utilities to build private communications networks that will survive a crisis like Sandy or Katrina, said Frisby. “Commercial networks tend to go down before the private utility networks, and the private networks need to be restored first to complete power restoration,” he said. Utilities need to have back-up power and priority of service to reach their customers and get their service back, said Frisby.

As electricity and telecom industries continue to converge, restoration crews need communications systems to work in order to restore power, said Frisby. “Restoring power is carefully orchestrated by personnel performing specific functions at specific times, and the crews need to be able to communicate with each other.” Utilities are also performing more complex operations through their private networks as a result, said Frisby. “As we focus more on resiliency and cybersecurity, we need to focus on the need for sufficient spectrum because without it we are running into problems that will only increase,” he said.