Telecom Companies Restore Service After Hurricane Matthew

About 57 percent of cellsites were still down in Marion County, S.C., as of 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, the FCC reported. Cellsite outages in Robeson County, N.C., dropped to 22.1 percent from 57 percent Monday. There were no other counties with more than 30 percent down, the agency said. Three percent of cellsites in affected areas were down Tuesday, versus 5.9 percent the previous day, it said. The FCC report used data from its Disaster Information Reporting System and covered 62 counties in the five affected states. For wireline and cable, 410 switching centers were out of service, with 302 of the outages due to no power, the FCC said. Another 47 switches were on backup power, it said. The cable and wireline outages left 432,433 users out of service, with 199,322 in Florida and 88,531 in North Carolina, it said. Eighteen radio stations were out of service, with 12 of them in South Carolina, the commission said. A TV station in Lumberton, North Carolina, is also down, it said. Emergency calls are being rerouted for three public safety answering points that went down in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, the FCC said. No other PSAPs reported problems, it said.

The storm flooded the corporate headquarters of Star Telephone, a North Carolina telecom provider located between Wilmington and Raleigh, said Executive Vice President Lyman Horne in an interview Tuesday. Roads are impassable, power is out and the 30,000-square-foot building will have to be “completely redone,” he said. In the meantime, the company is relocating to a vacant building downtown, he said. The company didn’t experience any network outages -- the flooding broke one fiber, and its ring network is self-healing, he said. The telco hopes to be back up and fully functional in the next three to four days, depending on how quickly roads are cleared and power is restored, he said.

“Continued flooding in North Carolina has created challenges for [CenturyLink] technicians working to repair damaged equipment and restore services in heavily impacted areas,” a spokesman said. “We will continue with those efforts as soon as we are able to gain access to those flooded locations.” The company “is making great progress in restoring phone and internet services impacted by Hurricane Matthew in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina,” he said. “We continue to bring in additional generators to maintain phone service in some parts of South Carolina and North Carolina until commercial power can be restored.”

Frontier Communications restored service in North Carolina and is watching “potential dam breaches” that could affect its service areas, a spokesman said. “Power outages continue throughout the state of South Carolina, and as a result, there are 915 customers without service. We are actively positioning generators to help address as many of our customers as possible.”

Some customers may “experience issues with their wireline and wireless services in coastal areas due to flooding in NC and SC,” an AT&T spokeswoman emailed Tuesday. It restored wireless service to nearly all parts of Florida, Virginia and Georgia, and is working to resolve remaining outages “as quickly and safely as conditions allow,” she said. Some Sprint customers “may have experienced service issues due to commercial power outages,” but service was 99 percent restored in Florida and 97 percent restored in all affected areas by Monday, a spokeswoman said. “Our teams remain on the ground in all other impacted areas refueling and deploying additional generators as needed and working to fully restore service.” T-Mobile fully restored service in Florida and Virginia, and the network was 90 percent online in the Carolinas, T-Mobile USA Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray tweeted Monday.

Charter Communications is “well into recovery in Florida and the Carolinas,” a spokesman said. “As is often the case, the vast majority of customers affected are power-related: as power is restored to homes/businesses, or to our network serving them nearby, our services are restored, too.” For other customers with downed telecom lines, Charter crews will restore service as soon as it’s safe to access affected areas, he said.

Verizon deployed wireless emergency communications centers in Savannah, Charleston and Bluffton, South Carolina, the company said in news releases Tuesday and over the Columbus Day weekend. The WECCs are generator-powered mobile units with device chargers, computer workstations, and cellphone, tablets and other mobile 4G devices. WECC technicians can troubleshoot and charge wireless phone batteries that survived the storm, Verizon said. The carrier also kept open its stores in affected areas, it said.

AT&T and Verizon said they wouldn’t assess overage fees for talk, text and data usage during the hurricane. AT&T said Monday it covered usage Oct. 9-12 in affected counties in Georgia, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina. The company said it would extend the payment due dates for GoPhone and Cricket customers to Oct. 11. Verizon said Monday it would cover usage in affected areas of the same states except Virginia, with the window of time varying by area. Comcast announced it would open Xfinity Wi-Fi hot spots to everybody in affected areas of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

State utilities commissions reported no landline outages, with disclaimers that they have limited telecom authority. A North Carolina Utilities Commission spokeswoman said she wasn’t aware of any outages, cautioning that state deregulation means the commission no longer receives outage information from AT&T or CenturyLink. No landline outages were reported in South Carolina, but the Public Service Commission doesn’t regulate cellphones or VoIP, said Dukes Scott, executive director of the state’s Office of Regulatory Staff. The Virginia Corporation Commission Division of Communications received no Matthew-related complaints, but its jurisdiction excludes wireless and VoIP landline, and Verizon, CenturyLink and Cox don’t have to report major outages, a commission spokeswoman said

The Florida PSC doesn't regulate telecom, but about 48,000 customers -- mostly in the Jacksonville area -- are still without power, a spokeswoman said. There were 1.1 million customers without power when the storm exited Florida Friday, she said. Georgia’s state operations center didn’t call in the PSC staff for assistance, even though the commission had expected to be invited, a commission spokesman said.