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Phone Service Returning in Hurricane Zone

September 7, 2005
Wireless and landline telephone companies report service is steadily being restored along the Gulf Coast, where Hurricane Katrina knocked out cell towers, took down utility lines and left hundreds of thousands of consumers and emergency workers without service.

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New Orleans remains the hardest-hit. BellSouth says that 19 of its 131 central offices in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are offline. Those offices service about 187,000 lines, 166,000 of them in the New Orleans area.

The biggest problem is access. Crews have not been able to get into damaged areas to assess what will be required to repair their networks. BellSouth says it hopes to have most areas fully restored within 30 days, although it will take much longer to restore service in New Orleans.

Wireless

Wireless service is slowly returning to much of the battered area, although in New Orleans reliable hot spots are centered around the airport and the Superdome. Wireless carriers are replacing downed towers, bringing in generators in areas where electricity is still unavailable and repairing damaged equipment, although companies say limited access to the storm-ravaged area is the biggest obstacle.

Verizon Wireless

In Louisiana, central New Orleans has widespread outages and very limited coverage. Service has been restored at Louis Armstrong New Orleans Airport. Houma and other areas to the southwest have generally good coverage, as do areas north of Lake Pontchartrain.

In Mississippi, the Biloxi/Gulfport area has limited coverage although service is restored at the Gulfport-Biloxi Regional Airport, a major base of rescue operations. Mobile cell towers have been deployed at Kessler Air Force Base, the FEMA distribution center in Gulfport and the Ocean Springs area.

Service has been restored in most of Alabama and the Florida Gulf Coast, the company said.

Verizon Wireless said it has been using text messaging, which often gets through when voice communication cannot, to help reunite families and to advise callers unable to reach the 504 area code.

The company said it had 20 mobile cell towers ready to be deployed in hard-hit areas as soon as crews are allowed into the damaged region.

Cingular Wiress

Cingular Wireless said service was still very limited in New Orleans, with service improving along the Gulf Coast. The company said it was "feverishly" working on its network.

Sprint Nextel

The company's restoration efforts are complicated because it has to deal with two different networks. It has already deployed mobile cell sites to prop up both networks.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile says its site atop the Crowne Plaza Hotel Astor on Canal Street in downtown New Orleans is providing coverage in the French Quarter, the convention center, the Superdome, and the airport in New Orleans. T-Mobile technicians have been able to enter the city and work on cell sites under the escort of the U.S. National Guard, the company said.

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