Just FYI, when Seattle had that spell of bad weather last winter,
it sure was nice to have that big 'ol gen at the VZW site nearby pumping
out the juice - and the site staying up the whole time. The GSM carriers
(and Sprint) were LONG off the air.

There is NO substitute...


"Todd Allcock" <elecconnec@AmericaOnLine.com> wrote in message
news:132317987420070716180107elecconnec@AmericaOnL ine.com...
> At 16 Jul 2007 06:44:55 -0400 George wrote:
>
>> The old ATT TDMA sites that are going/gone away had backup generators.
>> The GSM sites just have a minimal amount of battery. So with anything
>> other than a short term power failure you aren't calling 911 (or
>> anyone else) on your iphone.
>
>
> If any other GSM carrier is operating (like T-Mobile) the 911 call would
> go through them.
>
> And forgetting the doom and gllom scenarios, backup batteries are good
> for several hours- longer than than Vast majority of power outages. In
> this post-Katrina world, AT&T has decided to spend their "backup"
> resources on things like an increased number of COWs (Cells on Wheels,)
> stored regionally, to deploy to areas in a true state of emergency,
> rather than try to increase backup capacity of every cell tower in their
> network.
>
> In my nearly 20-years of using cellphones, I've never lost service due to
> power outages- even in outages lasting for over two-days. I suspect the
> cellcos know what they're doing in that area by now!
>
>
>
> --
> Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
>