Besides losing power in their homes, Sandy left many people in the northeastern part of the US unable to use cell phones. The power outages stuck many cellular stations and left many people without any way to make contact with friends and loved ones in other parts of the world. Well, it seems that things are almost back to normal, but not quite at 100-percent just yet.
Verizon is reporting that it is at about 99-percent up and running, up from 97-percent on Friday. AT&T is reporting that 98-percent of its cell sites are operational and ready to go. This is good news for most parts of the northeast, but in New York City and New Jersey, people are still struggling with service, and things there are most definitely still a work in progress.
AT&T is reporting that 95 percent of its towers in NYC are good to go, while Sprint Nextel says that 85-percent of its network is operational in NYC, New Jersey and Connecticut. T-Mobile has 95-percent of NYC covered as well. Many of these areas still do not have power, so carries have been forced to roll out generators to power the sites that they can actually reach. Between wireless and wireline facilities, AT&T rolled out over 3,000 generators.
While everything is not perfect in terms of cell coverage in the areas where the mega-storm hit, it’s good to see the carriers taking steps in the right direction to put people back in contact with friends and loved ones. Hopefully, the rest of the cell sites are up and running in the next few days so everyone can use their phones and get back in touch with the world again. As always, we will keep you posted on this story.
[via Info World]
*devastation, not devistation