Hurricane Maria: Summary of communication status - and lack of

Tue Oct 10 07:39:50 UTC 2017

On 2017-10-10 00:47, 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. 

I found the coverage maps to be better than I would have expected.

> Claro, the ILEC but second in terms of mobile phone marketshare behind 
> AT&T,

Do AT&T and T_Mobile have much actual infrastructure or do they tend to
roam or network share with Claro? From what I read, Sprint/Verizon ride
on the  Open Mobile network as it is the only one still providing CDMA
signal.

Of course a round coverage dot on the map which provide CDMA is of
little use to those who have GSM phones (and vice versa).  (I guess LTE
roaming between Open Mobile and the GSM guys would work?)

> has started to more fully explain what "restored" means, and that 
> it doesn't mean everything as before the hurricane.  It is minimum 
> telecommunications.

I would expect that priority is in expanding coverage, not capacity.
Light up the one tower at the top of the hill with sub 1ghz band to have
farthest reach. But that means lots of people on same tower, hence lower
capacity per person.

The maps still show lots of individual round circles.

>  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.

If AT&T and T_Mobile rely a lot of Claro, this could explain a lot why
Claro is the one speaking out since it is its radios/antennae that are
being lighted up and it would be the one with the info on work/progress.

(and I suspect AT&T and T-Mo would provide crews to helop Claro restore
basic service first).