Hurricane Maria: Summary of communication status - and lack of

Tue Oct 10 05:28:51 UTC 2017

Please note that there is another looming problem with restoration of
services generally (not just telecommunications). The key here is the
power grid.

>From what I have read, a great deal of the operating infrastructure is
operating on backup generator. These generators are not meant for this
duty cycle. (Recall that most units are sized such that they will be
providing ~70% output if not higher and thus will run hard.) It will
not be long before some of them begin to fail.

Even if they can keep running for the longer term, they need to be
shut down every so many hours for service (oil change, etc.) Depending
on the unit, that may be measured in the hundreds of hours. One week
is 168 hours. One month is 720 hours. Fail to do this and the unit
evntually becomes a big pile of scrap metal. Any facility, beit a
pumping station, hospital, airport, cell tower, central office, or
sewage plant that must rely on generators for the foreseeable future
must consider this.

On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 12:47:21AM -0400, Sean Donelan wrote:
> 
> The Puerto Rico government has posted threee maps of cellular coverage and 
> GPS coordinates of Cells on Wheels (COWs) in service.
> 
> http://www.status.pr/Maps/
> 
> It still looks grim in Puerto Ricofrom a telecommunications perspective. 
> Its will be an interesting after-action study.  Other than "it was a 
> hurricane," I haven't gotten a good idea why so much of the 
> telecommunications network failed and backups still aren't working more 
> than 2 weeks later.
> 
> Claro, the ILEC but second in terms of mobile phone marketshare behind 
> AT&T, has started to more fully explain what "restored" means, and that 
> it doesn't mean everything as before the hurricane.  It is minimum 
> telecommunications.  Claro has been more willing to talk about the 
> situation in Puerto Rico, which is why I've referencing Claro a lot more 
> than other carriers.
> 
> This is a google translate of an interview from spanish.
> 
> "It is important to clarify that the radio bases put into service to date, 
> offer the same voice and data services as before the impact of the 
> Hurricane. In other words, if the base radio is 4GLTE, that is the service 
> it will offer. The other two components that influence the customer 
> experience are the voice and data plan and the equipment of each user."
> 
> "The network is also open to third-party customers as part of our 
> commitment to connect everyone in the country. In fact, over a quarter of 
> a million customers from other providers have connected daily to the Claro 
> network. When these customers connect to our network they only have voice 
> service as stipulated in the roaming agreement with the other providers.
> As for the fixed network, this morning the service was restored in the 
> central offices (OC) of Fajardo and Humacao, whose optical fibers had been 
> affected by the destruction of Hurricane Maria. In this way already have 
> fixed voice, internet and long distance services in these municipalities: 
> Ceiba, Fajardo, Luquillo, Humacao, Naguabo and Yabucoa. Already a total of 
> 57 municipalities have all 3 services. It is possible that some customers 
> of Claro served by these OCs do not have internet. This is possible as 
> there could be cables and posts broken and / or VRADs without AEE 
> service."
> 
> https://www.metro.pr/pr/noticias/2017/10/06/senal-claro-esta-ya-accesible-34-municipios.html

---
Wayne Bouchard
web at typo.org
Network Dude
http://www.typo.org/~web/