If you’re a telco, you’ve got an extra challenge during a storm like the one that hit Toronto yesterday. You have to keep your services online because people depend on you for everything from a text message saying that everything is okay to a cell phone call to 9-1-1. I checked in with Telus and Rogers to see how they handed things. First, here’s what Telus told me via Twitter:
There was indeed some challenges when water got inside power units, it caused the network to stop.
My sense is that customer impact was not severe. Is that correct?
That’s correct ! Most people had other things in mind and understood the situation. And the service was back quickly.
One thing that was pointed out to me via this conversation is that most of the towers are running on generators and they do everything they can to keep the service running.
In the case of Rogers, they too had some challenges. The RogersHelps Twitter feed was updated constantly. Here is an example:
We have reports of voice & data service interruptions affecting wireless customers in Etobicoke and Toronto west end (1/3) ^eo
— RogersHelps (@RogersHelps) July 9, 2013
The issues are due to yesterday’s challenging weather conditions yesterday (2/3) ^eo
— RogersHelps (@RogersHelps) July 9, 2013
We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to resolve as soon as possible. (3/3) ^eo
— RogersHelps (@RogersHelps) July 9, 2013
They did the same thing on their Facebook page as well. So that customers would know where things stood. I have to say that the only thing that my wife noticed on her iPhone was that it went from Rogers LTE to Rogers 3G. Other than that, the service stayed up.
The response to the storm from both Rogers and Telus is impressive in my books and reinforces the fact that telcos have your back in situations like yesterday.