Carrier responses to FCC wildfire prepardness query

Sean Donelan sean at donelan.com
Tue Sep 24 16:43:58 UTC 2019


Today, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular and Verizon have responded to 
the FCC's inquiry about their prepardness for California wildfires and 
preventative public safety electric grid shutdowns.

PSHB proceeding number 19-251

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/filings?proceedings_name=19-251&sort=date_disseminated,DESC

As typical, the carrier responses were mostly happy, happy, joy, joy 
letters.

The FCC asked about backup power readiness, but last year many of the 
communication outages were because of damaged fiber routes during 
wildfires isolating cell towers and mobile switching stations.  Carriers 
minimize spending on route diversity in rural areas.  COWs, COLTs, etc. 
use alternative satellite and microwave backhaul, but alternative 
backhaul is less common for permanent facilities.

I didn't hear about any WISPs during last year's wildfires.



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