Looking for clarity amid the chaos caused by Hurricane Katrina is like looking for the needle in the proverbial haystack. In the race to restore telecom service to the affected areas, should one carrier be praised and another reprimanded for getting services up and running? Does it depend on how extensive coverage was in the area in the first place? I know tower placement is based on scientific, legal and aesthetic principles, but tower destruction via hurricanes and flooding surely is a luck-of-the-draw matter, depending on where the tower was located and the route of the hurricane. And yet, the manner in which the network was built likely does affect how it withstood the disaster.
And what do statistics mean? I didn’t question when the media reported 80 percent of New Orleans was under water. And yet, when someone says 40/60/80 percent of telecom service is restored, the questions come rolling. Is that 60 percent until it connects to the wired network? Is it 60 percent using COWs and COLTs? Is it 60 percent because the carrier had an inadequate footprint in the area anyway? Does it matter to customers who can’t charge their phones?
And when BellSouth says it will cost $400 million to $600 million to rebuild the wireline network, is that reasonable?
So when I read a news release signed by a few congressmen charging that hurricane victims had had their wireless service cut off, I was suspicious. Have wireless carriers been behaving as poorly as some of the politicians? Wasn’t it more likely that a victim’s coverage plan never went beyond local-area calling, and now that victim is in a different state? Or that a hurricane victim was slated to have service discontinued Sept. 6 because the person hadn’t paid a bill in three months, and that order went through, regardless of the hurricane? These accusations started a week after the hurricane. Had the billing cycle even been completed?
And what about people who had automatic withdrawals from their bank accounts set up for their cell-phone bills? Is that the bill you want to pay when you’ve lost your home?
Meanwhile, it is more of a challenge to restore wireless service when you’re being shot at. Chaos. At the end of the day, these questions will be important: Did carriers act in good faith before, during and after the storm? Were they good corporate citizens? And God forbid if another disaster strikes, will the lessons learned from this painful process help diffuse the pain of the next trauma?
