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Hurricane Sandy: Better Cell Site Backup Needed
Why did some carrier networks maintain connection through the brunt of the storm but go dead the next day? Inadequate backup battery power.
The wireless devastation wrought by Superstorm Sandy may be reason to re-evaluate the amount of battery backup power available to commercial cell sites after a major disaster.
Light Reading Mobile spoke to a public safety network expert at the 4G World show in Chicago this week who suggested one reason why some networks maintained connection through the brunt of the storm but went dead the next day was inadequate backup battery power.
"After Katrina, the FCC mandated eight-hour battery backup on cell sites," Emil Olbrich, lead project engineer for the office of law enforcement standards at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said.
That, though, was just the start of a long struggle between the regulator and the industry.
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