Verizon - along with other major operators - says it is prepared for hurricane season
THOR, COWs and COLTs are among its assets
An analyst tells us that its satellite backhaul is for the direst of emergencies
It's that time of year again and the ocean is stirring up a storm!
About two-thirds of all Atlantic hurricane activity happens between August 20 and October 10 every year in the United States. So we're getting updates from all the major mobile operators – AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon – about their readiness. This week it's the turn of Verizon.
Recon Analytics Founder Roger Entner told us that all the of big three operators are at "about parity" with their emergency response vehicles and teams. "If you'd asked 10 or 15 years ago, Verizon would have been in the lead," he noted. As we'll see, however, Verizon is starting to bring new assets into the disaster recovery game.
Verizon spoke to us last week about the assets it can pull together to face hurricane, wildfires and other natural disasters and civil unrest. The latest tool in the box is satellite backhaul, Mark Paff, director of business continuity and event management at Verizon, told Fierce.
“We have three earth stations that tie into our backhaul network,” noted Paff. He said that Verizon has used geostationary and – now – low earth orbit (LEO) satellite providers, including Hughesnet and SpaceX/Starlink.
Verizon is starting to invest in AST SpaceMobile for future satellite-based direct to device (D2D) services and has just partnered with Skylo for similar services in North America. The satellite backhaul, however, is ready now to provide some kind of network connectivity in a major disaster.
The kind of emergency backhaul that satellites can provide will not be high bandwidth. You won’t be downloading YouTube videos in the rubble, but it may provide you the ability to get a text message off to emergency services.
"I haven't heard that from the other guys," said Retcon's Entner. He noted, however, that we would be dealing with a "catastrophic" hurricane – or other disaster – if we're talking about underground fiber backhaul links being damaged. "If you had aerial fiber, which you shouldn't have had in the first place, then yeah, I can see how a hurricane can devastate that."
Facing down the storms
And speaking of storms, “we’re in the heart of the hurricane season” in the U.S., Paff noted. He added that this season had already seen two major storms: “Beryl that hit the Houston area and Debbie that came up through Florida, went out to sea, and came back up in the Northeast."
We previously noted Verizon has a number of vehicles adapted to deal with emergencies, such as its The Tactical Humanitarian Operations Response (THOR) vehicle and Cell on Wheels (COWs) trucks. Paff said that these assets are served by teams like Verizon’s major emergency response incident team (MERIT).
“So these technicians and engineers whose day job is to repair, grow and maintain all of our networks but we train to the same level as a hazmat [hazardous materials] team in a fire department to go into a hazardous situation with the proper PPE [personal protective equipment] and can actually actually restore our network under hazardous conditions,” Paff said.
He noted that that Verizon also have their Frontline organization, which is a group that is specifically trained to work with first responders. “The make up of that team is former first responders,” Paff said, so that they can embed themselves with emergency workers and provide emergency communications capabilities.
Pretty cool stuff!