Tuesday, September 10, 2013

AT&T And T-Mobile Have Joined To Help Sandy Victims Connect

By Cornelius Nunev


According to the FCC, about 25 percent of all cell towers are down in the 10 states impacted by Hurricane Sandy. However, in a rare act of cooperation between the communications competition, AT&T and T-Mobile have publicized that they will be briefly joining their networks to supplied service for Sandy victims in two of the regions hit hardest by the hurricane, New York City and New Jersey.

Mixed forces

Lots of people are calling Sandy a "super storm." It has caused land lines to go down entirely and has made it very hard to get calls through on the networks. The cell connection has been pretty bad.

In New York City, 20 percent of the networks were down, according to T-Mobile.

To be able to help the sufferers of Sandy, AT&T and T-Mobile are combining efforts and sharing 3G networks and GSM networks. They will not charge any roaming charges or change service agreements to do this.

Both communications giants use network technology based on GSM and UMTS standards, which makes them compatible for sharing the traffic load.

Least-congested will look after call

No matter which carrier you are using, the network that is the least congested will take the call at that time. AT&T and T-Mobile suggest that customers do nothing out of the ordinary and make calls like normal.

Worse before it gets much better

The deal is definitely temporary, but it could last for a long time. It is not fast and easy to get the communications back up, and it will take a lot of time.

Genachowski is the FCC chairman who said:

"Our assumption is that communications outages could get worse before they get better, particularly for mobile."

Backup generators may not last long enough while operating cell towers until power is restored. Nobody knows when the power will come back on.

Could just be marketing

AT&T and T-Mobile are both doing something that is really good for the area, but they are probably doing it for selfish reasons also. There is a good chance they both just want to advertising.




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