Five years after big blackout and most cell towers still have inadequate backup power

Five years after the largest blackout in North American history on August 14, 2003, it isn’t just utilities that still are having problems meeting reliability standards. So are many many wireless telephone companies, whose cell phone towers would go silent after several hours of no commercial power.

When millions lost their power in 2003, and as seen since in several natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina in 2005, cell phone towers soon started running out of power from backup batteries, making it very difficult for people to communicate.

For more than a year Federal Communications Commission has been trying to institute rules that would require the telcos to equip their cell phone tower sites with backup service that would keep them running for at least eight hours. But the wireless industry - led by CTIA -the Wireless Association, Sprint Nextel Corp. and others - has resisted this, saying it is too expensive.

They took their case all the way to a federal appeals court that last month put the proposal on hold until the FCC got bureaucratic permission from the Office of Management and Budget.

There is one shining exception to this: Verizon Wireless has been installing permanent generators at its cell sites across the nation and now has up to 80 percent of its sites in many areas equipped with longterm backup power. Verizon has not joined the wireless industry in opposing the proposed FCC rules. Instead, it been widely praised for setting a reliability standard in the industry by adding redundant power supplies to its network of cell towers.

Many of the nation’s 210,000 cell phone towers have some sort of battery backup power in place that allow the sites to handle relatively short power disruptions that last no longer than a few hours. But in massive blackouts, as seen in 2003, once those batteries are drained, the towers cease to function.

Michelle Gilbert, a spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless, says most Verizon sites already have eight hours of backup battery power. But added to that at hundreds of Verizon’s busiest sites since 2003 have been diesel generators that keep the sites powered for days before needing refueling.

If the tanks start to run dry, Gilbert says, “an alarm goes off when the generator’s fuel tank gets low, alerting Verizon Wireless that it needs to be refueled.”

She said the new generators mean “essentially unlimited backup power.”

Not so, though, for the rest of the wireless industry, which has estimated that to add longer backup power capabilities would cost up to $15,000 per site, something Sprint Nextel said would cause “staggering and irreparable harm” for the company.

T-Mobile has also voiced opposition to the FCC eight-hour backup power proposal, noting that the amount of batteries needed to assure eight hours of backup power would weigh as much as 1,500 pounds. In urban areas, T-Mobile says, many cell phone towers are on roof tops, which are unable to bear such weights.

The FCC isn’t buying that argument. “We find that the benefits of ensuring sufficient emergency backup power, especially in times of crisis involving possible loss of life or injury, outweighs the fact that carriers may have to spend resources, perhaps even significant resources, to comply with the rule,” the agency said in a regulatory filing.

“The need for backup power in the event of emergencies has been made abundantly clear by recent events, and the cost of failing to have such power may be measured in lives lost,” it said.

AT&T has refused to comment on the FCC’s proposed rule.