With about 490,000 Texas homes and businesses without electricity Thursday morning and power plants gradually coming back online, the telecom sector shouldered its share of outages. Poweroutage.us, which aggregates data from utility websites, said the number of homes in the dark is trending down from more than three million on Wednesday.
On Thursday, telecom providers reported 208 site outages in Texas affecting 369,918 wireless and 34,868 wireline users, according to the FCC. That compares to 140 reported outages in Texas affecting 279,585 wireless and 9,354 wireline users Wednesday.
Oklahoma telecom providers reported eight sites out, impacting 24,172 wireless and 270 wireline users on Thursday. That compares to seven sites reported out Wednesday, affecting 23,208 wireless and 270 wireline users.
A total of four 911 call centers were impacted Wednesday in Texas and Oklahoma; There was no update for those Thursday.
Texas and Oklahoma have declared states of emergency, and the FCC reports focus on these states. The FCC is coordinating with FEMA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The interdependencies between power and communications service remain a challenge as persisting power outages and rolling brownouts force communications service providers to rely on backup power, according to the Commission. Regions impacted by the winter storms have requested fuel distribution support from FEMA and CISA and state emergency management officials. “Not only are icy roads continuing to hamper fuel distribution, but freezing temperatures are also causing fuel in the impacted areas to gelatinate,” states the FCC in its report. FEMA is working with states to develop a fuel plan, while the FCC continues to coordinate with regional and state officials to identify priority communications sites.
“Texas state officials report the communications industry is doing a great job of coordinating and sharing information,” states the FCC in its Network Outage Reporting System. Neither FEMA nor the impacted states have asked the Commission to activate its Disaster Information Reporting System.
Chief Nim Kidd, head of the Texas Division of Emergency Management said in a press conference yesterday his department is working with AT&T to help refuel their cell towers and generators to keep the wireless telecommunications system up and running. “Cell towers around North Texas for all different providers are experiencing similar power loss issues to the ones Texans are facing in their homes,” Kidd said. “Those cell towers have backup generators and backup batteries, but even those can sometimes fail, causing connection issues for some Texans.” Kidd said icy roads were affecting their ability to refuel generators.
AT&T issued the following statement: “Commercial power outages and damage from snow and ice may affect service for some wireless and wireline customers. We have generators supporting cell sites and we have teams refueling fixed generators as needed.”
Although there have been no instances of hostile reactions to tower crews, Austin Power reported municipal utility workers encountered threats and in some cases had things thrown at them as they worked to restore damaged power infrastructure.
“Our crews have been working 24/7 and in these elements,” Austin Energy said in a tweet. “Some of our crews are reporting incidents of harassment, threatening them and even throwing things at them. I know people are extremely frustrated. But please, I beg of you, do not approach AE crews.”
Verizon posted a statement yesterday saying the telecom is waiting until roads are passable before its crews resume efforts to refuel their generators. The carrier said it will deploy temporary portable generators to sustain operations in the midst of widespread commercial power outages.
“We continue to see some service interruptions on scattered cell sites throughout the state, with the majority of Verizon customers experiencing minimal service interruptions due to overlapping coverage (service from nearby cell sites),” the company said.
“Our engineers in the virtual command center are in close communication with city and state officials and first responders to prioritize our response efforts as soon as it is safe to get our engineers and technicians back out on the streets.”
The Commission reminded emergency communications providers, including broadcasters, cable service providers, wireless and wireline service providers, satellite service providers, emergency response managers and first responders, and others needing assistance to initiate, resume, or maintain communications operations to contact the FCC Operations Center by phone at 202-418-1122 or by e-mail at: FCCOPS@fcc.gov.
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