[opendtv] Re: 11 years after
- From: AMGMedia@xxxxxxx
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 11:46:40 -0500 (EST)
Northeast slowly comes back to life after Sandy
By Michael Grotticelli
While over-the-air television broadcasters continued to function
around-the-clock during coverage of Hurricane Sandy, the devastating storm
wrecked
cell phone towers, cable systems and wireless communications for ten
northeastern states. Service was still being restored nearly a week later. This
was a
seminal moment for broadcast technology as well, as reporters used
microphones, camcorders and other devices live on the air despite horrendous
conditions of excessive water, wind no external power-and for the most part
everything worked reliably.
Wireless cellular services didn't fair quite as well. The FCC reported that
the massive storm knocked out 25 percent of wireless mobile towers and a
fourth of all cable service in the ten states. Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint
Nextel and T-Mobile USA reported service problems in about 158 counties from
Virginia to Massachusetts.
By midweek, the number of cable, telephone and broadband disruptions were
reduced to âwell underâ 20 percent, an FCC spokesman said. Service was
slowly being restored on a region-by-region basis.
Thanks to a series of back-up generators and viewers with portable digital
TV sets, vital information continued to be distributed despite the harsh
conditions. Indeed, Local broadcast stations in New York City, Washington,
Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston reported the story with little disruption.
Only a few suffered technical glitches. In many cases, news employees were
called in for the duration of the storm. It was all hands on deck and stations'
staff responded.
âEverybody left home on Saturday prepared to be gone for five to seven days,
â Michelle Butt, news director at Hearst's WBAL-TV in Baltimore, told the
Baltimore Sun newspaper. âYou don't stop covering the storm just because the
sun comes out.â
Stations who streamed their live coverage on websites and mobile apps
reported heavy traffic. For example, WPVI-TV in Philadelphia, the ABC O&O,
achieved 13.1 million page views across mobile and desktop on October 29th (a
single day record) and had over nine million page views on Sunday, October 28th.
During the storm, a âsmall numberâ of 911 call centers, whose locations
were not revealed, went out of service but most of their traffic was rerouted
to others centers, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski told reporters in a
conference call. Some of those re-routed were to centers without electronic
location information telling the cell center where the call originated.
The call centers are the responsibility of the phone companies to maintain.
It was the second time since this June that 911 service has faced
weather-related failures. In the summer, it was from a violent wind and
thunderstorm,
which knocked out service for about one million people in Northern
Virginia.
âOur assumption is that communication outages could get worse before they
get better,â Genachowski said last week. That's because cell towers running
on backup generators went down before electrical power was restored.
Utility companies estimated by mid-week that as many as eight million
customers were without electricity and it could be several days or even weeks
before restoration of service. Flooding or snow damaged other cell sites.
Verizon reported six percent of its cell sites down, while T-Mobile
reported 20 percent of its network in New York City alone was out of service.
AT&T
would not give the status of its system.
Verizon, based in New York City, had flooding at three central offices with
telecommunications equipment in Lower Manhattan, Queens and Long Island,
Reuters reported. Its downtown headquarters, which serves most of Wall Street,
had three feet of water in the lobby.
Network and series television production in New York City, knocked out by
the storm, gradually came back by week's end. Universal Television's 30 Rock
went back into production on Wednesday and Smash and Deception in New York
and Do No Harm in Philadelphia resumed production on Thursday.
David Letterman taped a couple of shows without a studio audience at his
CBS theatre in midtown Manhattan. Comedy Central's The Daily Show and The
Colbert Report resumed taping Wednesday night after being shut down.
âOverall, the condition of our communications networks is improving, but
serious outages remain, particularly in New York, New Jersey and other
hard-hit areas,â FCC chairman Genachowski added. âWe are continuing to work
closely with FEMA and our other federal, state, and local partners-as well as
communications companies-in response efforts.
âIn the days and weeks ahead, we will continue to expect the unexpected as
the full picture of Hurricane Sandy's impact on communications networks
develops. The crisis is not over. We'll continue to be intensely focused on
helping with the full recovery of wired and wireless communications
infrastructure.â
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