Are Your Towers Prepared For The Second Half of Hurricane Season?

In 2012, there was an increase of hurricanes and tropical storms during the months of August, September, and October. Even though Hurricane Season officially begins on June 1^st, it doesn’t end until November 30^th. The last few months usually have the most storms, which can affect cell towers and cell phone reception.

The FCC reported that Hurricane Sandy knocked out 25% of the cell towers in the affected regions. However, American Tower shared on their website that 48 American Tower sites responded by providing more than 113 days of power to downed sites and delivered 100% performance.

There was a total of 15 named storms between August and November in 2012 compared to only 4 named storms that occurred between May and the end of July. David Goldman of CNN reported that, “As a storm approaches, carriers ready a fleet of emergency equipment with some peculiar, farm-like names: COWs (Cells On Wheels), COLTs (Cells On Light Trucks), and GOaTs (Generators on Trailers).”

These are temporary actions to solve a potential problem, but these precautions can help when storms knock out cell towers. Most cell towers are strong enough to withstand the winds of a hurricane; however, power outages are the biggest threat to the towers. If you are looking to keep your cell tower up and running during this hurricane season then use battery backups or backup diesel generators just in case the battery does fail.

“In particularly bad storms, however, sometimes cells that have gone dark become unreachable. That's when the cell phone companies roll out the COLTs and COWs, forming makeshift cell towers in an attempt to maintain constant coverage,” Goldman reported.