US telco giant T-Mobile has bolstered its network ahead of this year's hurricane and wildfire season.

T-Mobile, like rival telcos AT&T and Verizon, supports first responders during times of crisis when networks go down due to natural disasters.

This year, the carrier has focused its strategy heavily on utilizing AI to improve its response efforts.

T-Mobile has leveraged its AI-enabled Self-Organizing Network (SON) technology, which the carrier notes can continuously adjust network performance in real time to help keep customers and first responders connected when it's required.

"We don't prepare for these disasters when the disasters hit, we prepare for them all the time, even when there is not a disaster happening," Ankur Kapoor, executive vice president, chief network officer, T-Mobile, told DCD.

Kapoor explained that AI has already proven its worth in the carrier's network response, highlighting Winter Storm Fern earlier this year.

T-Mobile's SON was able to make tens of thousands of automated adjustments, enabling sites to run for more than 250,000 additional minutes. Because of this, communities were able to keep in touch with families, access critical resources, and call for help.

"During Storm Fern, we measured what our recovery time was compared to the last time we had a hurricane, and we were able to bring 90 percent of customers back to connectivity within three hours of the storm hitting," said Kapoor.

"We were able to get 98 percent of the customers back to connectivity within eight hours, even though in that geography, almost 10 percent of the sites were down, and only one percent of the customers were impacted."

Kapoor said this was down to T-Mobile's self-optimizing network, affectionately dubbed SON.

According to Kapoor, SON is able to give T-Mobile real-time updates every 15 minutes during a natural disaster, such as a hurricane or storm. He explained that T-Mobile changes the tilts of the antennas "on the fly," along with the estimates of the antennas, and the parameter settings on the radio network to accommodate more people.

"The reason we do it every 15 minutes is when you're in these disaster scenarios, what's happening on the field changes every hour. They set up camps, which might be a safe place, but that safe place two hours later could not be safe anymore," he added. "So that's why we have to do it on the fly, so we do it every 15 minutes. We see where people go, and where the connectivity is needed."

Extending battery life at sites

Beyond using SON for real-time updates, Kapoor explained that T-Mobile has also used AI to drive efficiency gains.

This has seen the carrier focus on extending the battery life across its cell sites where its generators sit.

In order to do this, however, it has required T-Mobile to tinker with the layers of spectrum it has at these cell sites. T-Mobile uses 600MHz, 700MHz, mid-band 2.5GHz, and mid-band PCS and AWS layers, noted Kapoor.

"If we have lost power, we dynamically take layers down," said Kapoor, who notes that in some instances it's going to be difficult to reach certain sites due to roads being closed, while hoping generators at these sites are able to do their job.

"We have four different layers: we have the 600 layer, the 700 layer, the mid band 2.5GHz layer and the mid band layer with PCS and AWS... but if people are sleeping at night, if things have calmed down, we don't have to run every single layer, because it takes all of that, takes energy and fuel, and we shut it down," he added.

Kapoor said that by using these sleep units during Storm Fern, more than 58,000 hours of battery life were saved.

Beyond T-Mobile's AI deployment, the carrier has also bolstered its fleet of deployable assets to serve communities. This includes smaller rapid-deploy SatCOLTs, hybrid generators, and enhanced drone capabilities.

The company also touted its partnership with Starlink, reporting that during Storm Fern, T-Satellite supported more than 250,000 users with more than 1.5 million messages.

The carrier said it's now expanding to international locations with reciprocal roaming service in Canada and New Zealand, which will enable automatic connectivity abroad for customers with T-Satellite on compatible devices.

“With technologies like T-Satellite now supporting hundreds of thousands of Americans during real-world disasters and beginning to expand internationally, we’re continuing to make our network smarter and more resilient so people can reach loved ones, first responders can act quickly, and communities can recover faster," added Jon Freier, chief operating officer, T-Mobile.