[EAS] Lacking Common Sense...

[Ed Czarnecki]

Couple of things here ...

- its Congress that's calling a hearing, not the FCC (who would likely be
called to testify, as well as the wireless association, and no doubt the NAB
would make a play to put in their talking points).

- a range of issues were "outed" by the outage ... but a Congressional
hearing may not be the best arena to productively identify and discuss these
issues...

- 911 services faced several outages which really do need to be examined and
addressed (911 failed, even with POTS service still operating).  Not sure a
911 Telephone Outage Emergency (TOE) was issued by the affected
jurisdictions (someone can check me on that, the DASDEC in my office was
powered off during the blackout.

- mobile phone services in some areas were disrupted, almost immediately
with the storm.  I had no cell signal for almost 24 hours, then could only
get mobile-to-mobile VZW calls when the signal came back.  

- as far as the NAB commentary, true enough in regards to radio .. so the
very valuable lesson is to keep a battery powered radio around, and some
spare batteries- something many folks tend to forget these days.  Broadcast
TV was pretty much inaccessible to the million without power (or those like
me that had their TV antennas blown down).  FM on mobile devices (in case
the argument is going to go there) has its own problems, like battery life
on mobile devices, need for earbuds as an antenna, etc...

- I think the cloud computing issue is very key one to take a very hard look
at, as more businesses and gov't operations migrate to cloud-based services.

- and lastly, how about talking about antiquated power infrastructure and
possible lack of preventive maintenance?

-----Original Message-----
From: eas-bounces at radiolists.net [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On
Behalf Of Adrienne Abbott

 

Did anyone else see this? Why does the FCC need to have a Congressional
hearing to figure out that cells phone and the Internet don't work when
there's no power?

FCC examining storm damage to area phone networks after 911 calls failed

By Brendan Sasso - 07/03/12 01:29 PM ET

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is looking into the damage that
the massive storm that swept from the Midwest into the Northeast on Friday
caused to wireless and landline phone networks in the mid-Atlantic. 

As of Monday morning, 16 percent of cell towers in West Virginia were still
disabled. Nearly 11 percent of Maryland's towers were down, as well as 9
percent in Virginia and 3 percent in Washington, D.C., according to the FCC.

Widespread power outages also caused problems for many 911 call centers in
the region.

Lauren Kravetz, a spokeswoman for the FCC's Public Safety and Homeland
Security Bureau, said the commission is still investigating the problems
with emergency calls, but that 911 operators might have been unable to
identify a caller's number and location. She said it is unclear how many
people were unable to make an emergency call at all.

According to The Washington Post,
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/after-storm-911-phone-service-remains-s
potty/2012/07/02/gJQA33dHJW_story.html> many 911 callers in the region heard
either silence, busy signals or recorded messages saying the line was
inoperative.

"We plan to meet with a number of carriers in the coming weeks to explore
the cause of service issues to 911 service centers, overall lessons learned,
and other issues to ensure that the public received the best communications
service possible and is able to communicate effectively and in a way that
safeguards public safety in these situations," David Turetsky, chief of the
FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, said in an emailed
statement.

Gordon Smith, CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters, sent a letter
to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski on Tuesday, arguing that the damage to
phone networks demonstrates the importance of local broadcasters.

"This weather emergency again highlights the fact that broadcasters'
'one-to-everyone' transmission architecture delivers a robust and reliable
signal to hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously, with little or no
risk of a service disruption," Smith wrote.

The storms also reportedly
<http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/29/amazon-outage-netflix-instagram-pinterest
/> disrupted a major Amazon data center in Ashburn, Va. The outages took
down Netflix, Pinterest and Instagram, which rely on Amazon's cloud
computing services. 

No government services were disrupted by the Amazon outage, but the incident
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fridays-storms-raise-
questions-about-safety-of-cloud-computing/2012/07/02/gJQAP06HJW_story.html>
prompted Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) to move ahead with a hearing to
examine the benefits and dangers of cloud computing.

"Last week's powerful thunderstorms, along with the massive disruptions they
caused, exposed some of the vulnerabilities of cloud computing," said Bono
Mack, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Commerce,
Manufacturing and Trade. She said the panel will also examine privacy and
data security issues related to cloud computing.

Bono Mack's hearing could come later this month or sometime in the fall.

 

Adrienne Abbott

Nevada EAS Chair

"Radio burps, it cries, it needs to be fed all the time, it requires
constant attention, but we love it." Jim Aaron WGLN 

 

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