Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Nextel Reports A Six (6) State Outage Involving Hundereds Cell Sites

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 02:54:02 -0400

Calls, E-Mails Get Through
Communications Networks Withstand a Day of Strain

By Caroline E. Mayer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 15, 2003; Page A08

Cell phones worked, sort of, as long as you kept redialing.
E-mail went through, if your computer had power or you had a BlackBerry.
Old-fashioned telephones worked, too, but cordless ones didn't.
And pay phones were fine, if you could stand the long lines.

The power outage stressed the communications networks in the Northeast yesterday,
but officials at telecommunications companies said most people were able to find a
way to get their messages out -- if they were just persistent and patient.
"It was trial and error. We just kept trying until it worked," said Heather
Istwany, a D.C. first-grade teacher who was in New
York on summer break.

She was meeting a friend in Grand Central Terminal around 4 p.m., just as the
power went out. She and her friend left the train
station and immediately tried to call friends by cell phone. For the first hour,
Istwany got either a fast busy signal or silence. But
as she walked to the Manhattan Bridge toward Brooklyn, service finally seemed to
work. It helped, of course, that the outage came at the end of an August workday,
when many of the workers who weren't off vacationing just left their offices.

Verizon Communications Inc. said both its wireless and conventional telephone
networks worked throughout the outage,
although so many affected residents tried to use their cell phones that users
often heard fast busy signals, a sign that the network
was overloaded. "The network is working but carrying more signals that it is used
to," spokesman Eric Rabe said about an hour after the outage occurred. Other
wireless companies, including AT&T Wireless, Nextel Communications Inc., Sprint
PCS and Cingular Wireless said their networks had experienced some problems in
areas where the electricity went out. Sprint said that while its major switching
centers were operating, there were "multiple cell sites that were impacted."

Nextel said several hundred cell sites in affected areas of New York, New Jersey,
Michigan, Ohio, Connecticut, Massachusetts and "possibly surrounding states" were
not operating because of the power loss. Engineers were restoring power using
generators throughout the evening, a spokeswoman said.

Cingular said the network it shares with T-Mobile in New York City had 1,650 cell
sites down. Cingular spokesman Ken Ketley said the company was concerned that the
longer the outage lasted, the more sites that could go down as the batteries ran
out.

Long-distance carrier AT&T Corp. said its normal load of 2 million calls every
five minutes jumped to 2.6 million shortly after
the outage and continued at that rate for at least two hours more. But the network
was able to handle it, said spokesman Dave
Johnson. "A 30 percent blip is no problem for us," said Johnson, who noted that
the call volume didn't even compare to the 435 million calls made on Sept. 11,
2001.

Consumers trapped in the outage found it wasn't always easy to get through the
telecommunications mess, especially initially.
With cell phones flipped open, residents in Lower Manhattan circled buildings in
search of reception.
"Eventually, people gave up and just started talking to the person next to them,"
said Kanika Dewan, 26, who lives in the Battery Park neighborhood just blocks from
the World Trade Center site.

For those Manhattanites who didn't have wireless phones, the pay phone was an
alternative, despite the long lines. Jason
Chopoorian, a 28-year-old project manager, was 10th in line for a pay phone in
midtown Manhattan. "I just thought the city
grid went. As I found out a lot more, I worried about the next shoe dropping. How
much cash do I have? Where's the water?
How can I contact my friends and family?"

In Cleveland, Ernest Brown tried to reach his brother who was 60 blocks away. When
he couldn't get a voice call through his
cell phone, he resorted to text messaging. Meanwhile, Virginia Beach resident
Diana Campbell, in town for medical treatment at
the Cleveland Clinic, could only communicate through the voice-mail system on her
cell phone. "I have not been able to talk
with anyone even though I've called and called," she said.

America Online saw about 300,000 members suddenly disconnect after 4 p.m.,
bringing the total number of users on the service down to 2.1 million -- "a very
noticeable and precipitous drop-off" according to spokesman Nicholas Graham.
The actual phone lines most people used to connect to the Internet remained
available, if crowded. Users could also
temporarily switch to more distant access numbers. And the batteries in laptops
and "uninterruptible power supplies" -- small
backup systems for desktop personal computers -- would allow a computer to survive
a blackout for a while.
Enough AOL users appeared to have used one or another of these workarounds to pack
chat rooms set up for discussions about the outage. On at least two different
sites, people had posted variations of the same joke: "Oops. Is that what that
plug did?"

At Verizon, which is in bargaining talks with its unions seeking to avert a
strike, some public relations officials worked by flashlight taking calls from
reporters, first on the status of the talks, and then on whether telephone lines
were down as well.
With the lights out and their computers down, they drew the blinds to conserve air
conditioning and hunkered down for a
possible overnight stay in their offices on 44th Street in midtown Manhattan. They
declined to say whether negotiators had been
affected by the sudden blackout, repeatedly reiterating a single line: "These
negotiations are a process."
So, too, was the power outage.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60231-2003Aug14?language=printer

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 03:13:40 -0400

At  approx1819 Hrs Nextel tells the media everythings is OK-

NE Phone Networks Operating Normally
Thu August 14, 2003 18:19 PM
 http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3281246
__________________________________________________________________

At  approx 1953 Hrs Nextel reports problems with the Network.

UPDATE 3-Northeast U.S. phone networks flooded with calls Thu August 14, 2003 07:53 PM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3281772

So I guess Nextel has the 1 hr 34 Minutes "Homeland Security" network.

Timmy just lost his 43% raise!