Storm Causes AT&T Outage Across Midwest

dstates writes "AT&T left users across several Midwestern states without cellular phone service yesterday. The outage apparently resulted from a power failure at a Michigan switching center and spread to affect level3 Internet communications. The powerful windstorm also left 400,000 users without electricity. Interestingly, except for a few reports in Chicago and Indianapolis papers, AT&T has managed to keep this out of the mainstream media. Widespread communication failures also followed Hurricane Ike in Texas earlier this year. With the increasing trend for users to drop landlines and rely only on cell phones, this is becoming an emergency preparedness issue." Yes this included me. Still does. At least my office still has power — maybe we'll just camp here tonight. :)

Comments

Roaming?

[girlintraining]

The problem isn't the cell phone network per-se, but rather the inability of these providers to peer with each other. AT&T may have been down, but what about T-Mobile, the other GSM provider in the United States? When a major failure like this occurs that locks out only some cell phone users in a given area, the problem is not technology but politics.

Why, given how critical cell phones are during an emergency, this is allowed to continue is beyond me. Congress seems to care more about protecting corporate profits and reputation than providing a robust cellular network for its citizens. Hey, homeland security, are you listening? Fix this.

Re:Roaming?

[Lumpy]

AT&T/Comcast/AT&T burned a LOT of bridges when they became Cingular. I used to be able to roam almost anywhere, and if a roaming tower was the best strength I connected to that. After cingular got involved they pissed off a lot of other carriers. Now my phone refuses to talk to any nearby roaming towers but tries to connect to that single AT&T tower about 12 miles away that gives me barely any signal. I have to hack my phones to disable this configuration to get decent cellphone service out of them.

Re:Roaming?

[zappepcs]

They are trying to fix it, much the same way that Sarbanes-Oxley fixes accounting problems. Communications providers are required to keep an 8 hour power backup on all sites and 24+ backup on 'important' sites like switching centers or something along those lines. The idea is that storms like those that hit New Orleans would not cause the problems that they did. This storm is exactly the thing this measure by the FCC is supposed to fix... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Legislators (Goodbye FCC) do NOT know how to run businesses. Some perhaps, but on the whole they are terrible business advisers and this legislation only proves it in the aftermath of this storm. I hold a harsh opinion of this situation because AT&T should have had backups in place to handle this situation. All Communications providers deal with such things and AT&T has enough history to know what to do... shame on them.

Re:Roaming?

[zappepcs]

BTW, besides those rescuers you see on television after a storm, remember that there are ordinary heroes sitting in a truck babysitting a generator, or climbing poles, or renting a snowcat to get to the tower site so that your phone will work when you want it to. They are suffering the elements, usually alone, and bear the responsibilities of ensuring your comfort with little or no thanks. They are up all night watching the weather, planning and preparing to go babysit that tower(s) so your phone or pager will work. They work almost tirelessly for the simple comfort of knowing that when the shit hit the fan, the equipment they are responsible for did not fail. They are little appreciated on a normal day, and unseen during the emergency, but it is their dedication that you count on and not the system or the company.

Re:Roaming?

[Shakrai]

AT&T/Comcast/AT&T burned a LOT of bridges when they became Cingular. I used to be able to roam almost anywhere, and if a roaming tower was the best strength I connected to that. After cingular got involved they pissed off a lot of other carriers. Now my phone refuses to talk to any nearby roaming towers but tries to connect to that single AT&T tower about 12 miles away that gives me barely any signal

I don't think that really has to do with burning bridges. It has to do with AT&T not wanting to pay money for you to roam. It costs them money every single minute that you are using another carriers network.

I used to have a T-Mobile phone (had to ditch them for Verizon when I moved in with the GF -- no signal at her house) and they did the same thing. They would disable roaming on AT&T/Cingular in areas where they had coverage. Even if you were in a zone with no T-Mobile service you couldn't hop onto Cingular. To be able to roam on Cingular you had to drive out of the county where T-Mobile had native coverage -- then you'd be able to connect to and use the Cingular network. If you were within the county where they had native service but happened to be in a dead zone you were SOL -- roaming wasn't allowed.

I have to hack my phones to disable this configuration to get decent cellphone service out of them.

I'm surprised that worked. With GSM your home network decides whether or not you will be allowed to connect to that roaming partner based on the location area code. If that LAC indicates an area where they have native service they probably won't let you connect to the roaming partner. If it indicates an area where they don't have native service then you stand a better chance of being allowed to use that roaming partner.

Re:Roaming?

[Shakrai]

I wish I had mod points for you. I used to work for a WISP and had the "privilege" of climbing towers in god-awful weather after storms to restore service to our customers. It's scary enough to climb the things in normal weather. Doing it Upstate New York in January after a storm has coated the tower with ice is absolutely horrible.

The worst part was that was my first job and I only got paid $10/hr to scale the friggen things. Looking back on it I wasn't making nearly enough money to be risking my life like that. At least our customers were appreciative though. That helped more than you can imagine.

Re:Roaming?

[Shakrai]

I would love to see the part of the Constitution that says "Congress shall provide a robust cellular network for its citizens."

Don't worry -- someone will come along sooner or later and twist the interstate commerce clause until they manage to come up with that interpretation. Remember, all parts of the Constitution should be interpreted as liberally as possible, except the 2nd amendment of course. That clearly provides for a collective right and doesn't apply to the states.....

Re:Roaming?

[awyeah]

There are two things at play here: The ability to control network selection on the handset, and what the cellular networks allow you to do.

On GSM devices, there's a flag on the SIM card that tells your phone whether or not to show you the "manual network selection" menu. With AT&T, their SIM cards are configured to disable this menu when you're in the US, but enable it when outside the US.

However, on many devices, you can force them to ignore the SIM setting and have manual network selection enabled always. With Motorola phones, you can do it via SEEM editing, and there's obviously a way to do it on Symbian as well. This is what Lumpy is doing.

Shakrai, what you're talking about is the actual roaming agreements between providers. This also affects network selection. Providers can specify which phones are allowed on their network. Legally, all phones must be allowed to associate with all GSM towers to provide 911 capability, but they can be limited to just that. For example, when I only have T-Mobile coverage, my AT&T BlackBerry shows "SOS" where the signal bars usually are.

AT&T and T-Mobile have been doing this for a while. They had roaming agreements where specific cell sites would allow the other operator's phones in areas where the other operator's coverage was spotty.

So when Lumpy uses manual network selection on his phone, which he had to enable by modifying something, the rules that the operators set forth on their networks still apply. If he tries to associate with a T-Mobile tower in certain areas, he will most likely get locked out, but in other areas he may not.

Re:Roaming?

[JWSmythe]

    Several years ago, I was driving across the country from Florida to California. I was only a couple days behind a hurricane that had made a mess. No, it was way before Katrina.

    Every hotel along I-10 for hundreds of miles had utility trucks from all over the place. I usually drive at night to avoid traffic, and I know these guys need to at least get a little bit of sleep. I know the utility guys get sent out from all over the place to fix problems induced by bad storms. It never really hit me that it wasn't just a few hundred sent, but an entire army. I would stop at hotels, and they would tell me that they were completely booked up because of the utility guys. Not just their hotel, but every hotel in the city. "Try the next town, 50 miles down the road." It's not like they were hogging the rooms, they were stuffed in. One guy per bed, and a guy or two on the floor. This is our civilian army, that keeps things working after a disaster.

    Unfortunately, all the general public knows is "they don't have my power on yet.", even though it is an army working hard to repair everything. People like instant gratification. They think it should be a light switch fix (hit the switch, it works).

    It's a job I wouldn't want. High voltages, dangerous weather, and long hours.

If All You Have Is a Cell Phone...

[littlewink]

then you're out of luck. Most landline phones have independent power and will work in an emergency. That's one reason I always have a landline.

Not conspiracy, but AT&T has not been forthcom

[neapolitan]

I would argue that the OP has a point. I am a doctor, was on call (I'm not kidding), and missed several important messages due to my cellphone going out (my blackberry just silently stopped receiving all work mail, all internet functions went dead, full 3G signal but "tunnel failed.") Granted, there is a lot of redundancy in communications, so my pager later started going off with a lot of people saying "where are you???", and I then called them on a landline.

I thought it was my phone, rebooted 3 times, and only today did I find out that it was a national outage (saw here, confirmed all over the net.) I think AT&T should just have sent a free txt saying "We are having problems" or made an large scale announcement via voicemail, which would have helped me (and others) plan. I was about to get a replacement phone from a friend and plug my SIM into it.

The point is we start to rely on these devices, and blackberries, for better or worse, are used for very important things in business, health care, and otherwise.

Will AT&T repay me for the days my service was

[freedom_india]

First Question of any contract: Any contract in which any of the party is unable to fulfill the terms of the contract will be is liable to either NOT collect remuneration of the said contract for that quantity, OR reimburse the amount for that period.
Will AT&T send me a check for the days my service was out?
Because last i checked, weather is not a cause for NOT fulfilling a contract. For the same reason i cannot claim weather for not paying my mortgage.
Question is, will AT&T refund the amount for the period of outage.
If not a class-action suit can be filed in coordination with other users.

Re:Will AT&T repay me for the days my service

[cthulu_mt]

Most contracts include a "Force Majure" clause that absolves the service provider in the event of a natural disaster.

Not a conspiracy

[jmkaza]

AT&T has managed to keep this out of the mainstream media

I'm in Arizona, and I saw that AT&T service was down in the midwest from multiple sources, before I finished my first cup of coffee. If there's been any lack of information reported about this, my guess is that's because the press is more concerned about hundreds of thousands who are without power in below freezing conditions, rather than a few people who can't make phone calls.

Thats all a nice homespun story and all but..

[Viol8]

.. if "the company" didn't pay them, they wouldn't get out of bed. Lets not pretend they're up those poles out of the kindness of their hearts.

emergency calls do whatever it takes

[dominux]

Put the keylock on and dial 112, 911 or 999 on any mobile, watch as it punches straight through the keylock and will dial. It will place the call over any mobile network it can reach, roaming or otherwise. Now try it with no credit on a pay as you go SIM. still works. Now take the SIM out. Still works.