Hurricane Sandy, like Hurricane Katrina before it, highlights a
little-examined but perennial riddle:
what comes first in restoring life to normal after a major crisis,
electricity or communications? Without
electricity, there can be no form of electronic communications but without the
ability to communicate, power providers are ill-equipped to restore electricity
in anything but a haphazard manner.
In the wake of Sandy’s damage, both critical infrastructure providers,
telecommunications and electricity, were hard hit with outages due to downed
lines and damaged, flooded hardware. But
as the days wore on, a crucial distinction emerged between the two
providers: with no electricity and back-up
fuel in extremely short supply, communications providers simply had no power to
operate their networks, particularly their wireless networks. Last Friday, the FCC
commented on the situation, acknowledging that “replenishing fuel supplies
for generators that are enabling communications networks to continue operating
is a particularly critical challenge.”
This assessment echoes the conclusions
of an FCC panel asked to address how well communications networks fared in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. That
panel found that among the chief causes of communications failure after Katrina
were faulty batteries used by the telcos combined with lack
of power given that utilities had been knocked out too. The panel also found that communications
networks owned and operated by utilities fared fairly well because they were
designed to remain intact to aid restoration of service following a significant
event.
The importance of maintaining robust communications in a crisis
situation is one of the top reasons why utilities tenaciously argue they need
to maintain their own communications networks, such as private land mobile
radio communications and fiber and microwave-based systems that allow
system-wide communications, independent of and apart from the so-called “public carrier”
networks. Since the dawn of both industries, which occurred
at roughly the same time period -- Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison were
both pushing wires to homes and businesses simultaneously -- utilities have been
fighting with telecom providers to maintain their own communications networks
while telecom providers have been arguing that this duplication of infrastructure
is a waste of society’s resources and ignores the highly specialized and valuable expertise that telecom companies bring to the table.
And both industries are correct.
Utilities are rarely on the cutting-edge of technology innovation, a
handicap that is becoming clear, for example, in the cybersecurity arena, where
communications providers must develop razor sharp protection schemes or else
lose out to smarter, more technologically savvy rivals, while utilities have no
economic incentive – and indeed are often discouraged by regulators – to spend
more money or time on maintaining digital security. And yet, when it comes to crisis situations,
it all comes down to back-up power.
To keep their communications networks running, most utilities use
interim battery and long-term generator back-up which is usually indefinite – practically
unlimited storage of diesel, gas or other fuel sources is one of the perks of
being a power company. No other industry, including telecom
providers, can keep back-up power going for more than a day or two. A study I conducted in 2010 found that one of
the top reasons utilities are reluctant to rely on communications providers is "insufficient
levels of power back-up." Another top
reason that utilities are reluctant to rely on phone company networks for their
mission critical functions, according to the study’s findings, are "concerns
over disaster preparedness" on the part of telecom providers.
While telecom companies have made great strides since Katrina in
ensuring better power back-up during crisis situations, Hurricane Sandy
answers, for now, the riddle of what comes first in restoring life to normal,
electricity or communications. The
answer, of course, is that they both come first.
(With full disclosure, I spent
three-and-a-half years studying what most people, prior to the advent of the “smart
grid,” used to consider the arcane niche of “utility communications” on behalf
of the utility industry. But I also
spent years many more years before that conducting analyses on behalf of a host of
traditional communications providers so I’d like to think I’m coming at this
fully informed by the cultures and arguments of both industries.)
Image source: Power outage screen
capture from Google Maps.
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