Cellular Services – Be Prepared Before Disaster Strikes

While many cell phone users carry a cellular phone for business use, many people rely on cellular services for use in an emergency. However, disasters such as hurricanes and blackouts, have shown us that cellular services may not be reliable to use during natural disasters.

Cell phone service in Florida was interrupted when Hurricane Charley struck that area recently. Although cellular phones are wireless, relay towers are powered by electricity, and when the electricity is cut off, there's nothing that a cellular service provider can do about it.

Hurricane Charley disabled as many as 180 Cingular cell towers and 140 Sprint towers in Florida alone. Some towers had battery or generator power back ups for the cell phone service, but those back ups proved to be ineffective. It's nearly impossible to say how many cellular customers were affected by the Florida phone service failures.

Remember the blackouts in 2003? Cellular phone service over large portions of the United States failed during those blackouts and an AT&T Wireless spokesman said that during a "power outage of such massive proportions", it would be impossible for cellular carriers to engineer networks and backup systems.

According to cellular service providers, the back up systems they had in place during the blackout did what they were designed to do.

Cell phone service is still a relatively vulnerable technology and we need to keep in mind that when the lights go out for an extended period, chances are that cell phones will too.

Also see; Motorola cell phones.

Author Notes:

Jack Adams contributes and publishes news editorial to http://www.cell-phones-n-plans.com. A cellular phone industry resource that features service plan comparisons, cellular phone reviews and articles.