With so many customers, even 1 percent represents a lot of people, and Haberman said that Jersey City, Hoboken, and Union County in New Jersey, and the central part of Long Island in New York continue to have problems. Still, Verizon's network held up relatively well at a time when large swaths of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut were without power. Haberman credits the effectiveness of the network to Verizon's big bet on generators. The company has a fairly large number of generators at cell sites and regularly tests them for effectiveness, even running cell sites with traffic on the generators to ensure they can handle the load.
"Just like you would run them in your house, we test and test them with a load," he said, "We believe we had better service than our competitors," he said, At the low-point of the power outage, Verizon was running 1,500 generators, consuming about 100,000 gallons of fuel a day, Prior to the storm hitting, Verizon had lined up dota 2 iphone case contracts with fuel suppliers in the south and brought up fuel to its staging areas in the north, allowing the generators to run even after getting gas became an issue in the area, with drivers lining up for hours at gas stations waiting to fill up..
While many carriers will employ back-up generators, many only have enough fuel for a few days, and it's tough for any to plan for power outages that in some areas have gone on for a week. Haberman said there are still hundreds of generators running cell sites now, as power continues to be an issue for many parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Even at the lowest point, none of Verizon's generators ran out of fuel, Haberman said. While the number of generators at each cell site is high, Verizon constantly tries to up that number to guard against situations such as Hurricane Sandy. But Haberman noted that landlords and cooperative boards don't like them because they make a lot of noise when running. Verizon hopes a disaster like this opens the door to more people allowing generators near their homes and buildings.
Like other carriers, Verizon has plenty of experience dealing with the aftermath of extreme weather given the number of times the south and Gulf Coast get hit by hurricanes, Haberman said the company applied the lessons learned to the Northeast, That also meant dealing with an uptick in traffic, With other means of communication down, Haberman said he saw a rise in voice calls, text messages, dota 2 iphone case and data as more people chose to work from their homes, Haberman said his role is to provide support for the field technicians and ensure that every department has the right information to act, eliminating potential bottlenecks in the recovery process..
Haberman, who worked in the office, said his home still has no power, although his low-wattage generator has helped keep some lights on (he has to pick and choose what he can run because the generator has a peak of 3,000 watts, and only about 1,500 watts when run continuously). "My street did get power back, but five houses didn't, and I'm one of them," he said. "I don't think I'm a priority."Updated at 1:48 p.m. PT: to include updated stats from AT&T's restoration efforts. CNET talks to one of the executives responsible for preparing for and dealing with a crisis. Verizon says 99 percent of its networks are back up, while AT&T is up to 98 percent.