Five years after big blackout and most cell towers still have inadequate backup power
August 11, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment
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. Read more
