In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of thousands of people were scattered across the country. People’s homes were destroyed, their neighborhoods were flooded or left without power, and many had no way of calling for help or simply to let loved ones know they had survived.
While cellular networks were damaged along with nearly everything else, many carriers were able to get at least portions of their networks back up within days, supplemented by cells on wheels and cells on light trucks and working around flooded T1 lines with microwave backhaul. The quick response ultimately may have benefited the wireless industry by prompting people to rely more on their mobile phones.
Katrina appears to have substantially changed the usage patterns in cities that were most affected by the storm, such as New Orleans and Houston. Though not in the path of the storm, the Texas city abruptly become home to around 100,000 Katrina refugees.
Telephia found in a recent analysis of customer billing records that mobile use in Houston had jumped 31 percent since the first quarter of last year and subscribers were talking more than any other place in the country: about 1,100 minutes per month. Mobile-phone use had grown even faster in New Orleans itself, at a rate of 41 percent, putting the typical user talking on their wireless phone about 1,070 minutes per month. Both of those numbers tower over the national average in the first quarter of 2006, which Telephia put at 718 minutes per user per month.
“That’s a lot of talk time,” said Tamara Gaffney, product manager for Telephia. “That’s huge.”
The study was based on an analysis of a random sampling of wireless customers’ bills. Gaffney added that the surge in wireless use probably has a lot to do with the fact that wireless carriers, in general, were able to get their networks back online quickly and people got used to relying on their mobile phones.
“When you get used to not having a landline for a period of time, you change your behavior,” Gaffney said. “If you don’t have access to a landline and you start depending on your mobile phone and then you get used to it, you may not go back.”
Telephia also found a regional pattern of high usage across cities in the Southeastern United States.
“I think a lot of it has to do with the continuing recovery, and the fact that there may be a great scattering of all of the people that you normally would talk to,” Gaffney said.
In an indication of just how much of a population shift that Katrina caused, New Orleans went from a Top 40 wireless market as of the end of 2003 to barely making the Top 100 U.S. markets in January 2006, according to TeleCompetition Inc.. That reflects a reduction in mobile users in the market from about 800,000 subscribers at the end of 2003 to about 321,000 earlier this year.
“Things like hurricanes cause people to try new things, and cause changes to take place that might not have taken place otherwise,” said Dr. Peter Morici, a professor of business, logistics and public policy at the University of Maryland at College Park. Morici said that jarring events such as hurricanes will accelerate the switch from wireline to wireless.
“People start to realize they don’t need [a landline] anymore,” Morici said.
However, he noted, wireless coverage quality is uneven and some people may not be able to rely on it exclusively, especially in rural areas. And mobile phones often are more expensive than landlines, he added, particularly for families who could run up substantial calling bills.
In addition to the scattering of the population, many homes across the Gulf Coast have been abandoned, destroyed or are slated for demolition-making it hard to have a landline even if residents wanted one. Or as one of Hu Meena’s Cellular South customers told him, “It’s hard to make a phone call on a phone that’s connected to a wall if you no longer have a wall.” And with the first named storm of the season already having hit Florida, barely a dozen days into the hurricane season-well, it’s hard to take a landline with you when you’re evacuating.
“I think there will be more and more reliance on wireless,” said Meena, president of Cellular South. The regional CDMA carrier offers service in some of the hardest-hit areas of Mississippi, but not in New Orleans itself. He added that in the first month or so after the storm, Cellular South had a spike in requests for porting landline numbers to wireless phones, but that has since tapered off to normal levels. Cellular South was handling about five times its normal amount of roaming traffic immediately after Katrina; that has dropped down to about double pre-storm roaming levels, Meena said. While people who had landline service prior to Katrina may still have it, he added, the carrier is seeing heavier reliance on wireless for primary communications.
In an echo of the Telephia study, Meena said that Cellular South has seen its average minutes of use increase from around 1,200 minutes per month to around 1,400 minutes per month; the company offers an unlimited calling plan, so it already had a high MOU. Meena said the carrier also has seen a substantial reduction in churn, from about 1.8 percent pre-Katrina to about 1 percent post-hurricane, and grown its customer base substantially.
“Customers came to appreciate their wireless device more than any other time that I can remember, and that continues today,” said Meena.
