Hurricane Helene has led to widespread cellular outages across several Southeastern US states.
The category 4 hurricane, which has claimed more than 100 lives and produced wind speeds of 140mph, has battered Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia since reaching land late last week.
PowerOutage.us reports that more than two million people are still without power across the impacted areas. South Carolina, with 748,681 customers, is the worst affected, followed by Georgia (572,261), North Carolina (458,567), Florida (130,043), and Virginia (99,019).
Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia have also logged sizeable outages.
AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have all dispatched their engineer teams and deployed their respective disaster recovery response units to the impacted areas.
The hurricane has led to fiber cuts and extensive damage to cell towers.
AT&T noted yesterday (September 29) that it has received more than 100 requests for emergency connectivity support across the affected states.
"So far, this has been one of the largest mobilizations of our disaster recovery assets for emergency connectivity support," said AT&T in a statement.
Verizon and T-Mobile both reported damage to fiber cables. As of yesterday, Verizon said it had deployed more than 20 mobile satellite assets to provide temporary connection to cellular towers to get them back on air while waiting for permanent fiber restoration to be completed.
The carrier has also said that it will waive postpaid domestic call/text/data usage from September 26 until October 5.
Telcos in the US regularly hold test events to prepare for natural disasters such as hurricanes.
Earlier this year, DCD attended a hurricane simulation held by Verizon and the Military, aimed to test new technology and practice drills such as fiber splicing in hazmat suits.
Prolonged power outages have also hindered the telcos' response to restoring network services. Reuters reported that the hurricane has knocked out service to more than 5.2 million people.
Some communities have turned to Starlink's satellite broadband connectivity, as an alternative form of connectivity, following damage to telecoms infrastructure.
CBS North Carolina has reported that some people have brought in Starlink satellite Internet access and are allowing people to connect for free in Asheville, North Carolina. The service has been used by fire crews and at a retirement community.
Spectrum hit by widespread outages
ISP Spectrum has also suffered outages during the hurricane after damage was caused to one of its data centers.
The company noted that network lines at its regional data center in Spartanburg, South Carolina, were damaged during the wake of the storm.
Tens of thousands of Spectrum customers were impacted across several states, including Florida, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio.
"Before any repair work can begin, power must be restored to our network and then to your Spectrum services. Our local teams are on the ground assessing damage, making repairs, and restoring service where it's safe to do so. If you have lost power, please contact your local provider," said Spectrum.
Update: October 8 - NOAA data center knocked offline in North Carolina
Hurricane Helene caused a data center in Asheville, North Carolina to go offline during the storm.
As reported by The New York Times, the data center at the National Centers for Environmental Information is a key federal facility that monitors global climates.
Work is underway to get the facility back online, but it's reported that the outage will delay some agencies’ monthly updates on global warming and other climate indicators.
The data center is run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The NY Times reports that the building that houses the facility had power but not water, and its 'network service provider still was not operational.'