(I posted this in the South Carolina group as well)
Folks,
I Live in Western New York, however, I travel a great deal for work. In my job, we tend to use POC radios. I currently have them set up on T-Mobile. So far, they have been just about flawless for us (some signal issues in the hills of California). In thinking about your recent disaster woes, particularly communication problems, what has been the coverage loss (or lack thereof) with regard to cell phone use and more specifically POC comms. This would be during and after Helene.
Thanks very much for the feedback.
73, and the very best of luck to all.
Dan
Hurricane Helene struck the CSRA (Central Savannah River Area) in the very early morning of September 27, 2024. Almost immediately after the storm passed, this area lost nearly 100% cell phone coverage so POC radios would have been useless. We did have amateur radio repeaters on the air until their back up batteries died because of the inability to recharge them. Electricity wasn't fully restored to the area, completely, for about two weeks.
I live approximately 25 miles West of Augusta, Georgia and I use T-Mobile as my cell service provider and had zero service immediately after the storm. At my place of employment we use Verizon for our company cell phones and they were out of service as well. I can't comment on other cell providers but I'm assuming they couldn't provide service as well since the towers didn't have electricity or, were damaged from the high winds. I left the area a day after the storm to stay with family in Tennessee, since they were unaffected by the storm, and didn't have any cell service until I was about 60 miles West of Augusta. I was out of town for a week after the storm and when I returned we had cell service restored. It's my understanding that cell service wasn't unavailable for approximately 60 miles East of Augusta as well. The swath of the storm was approximately 100 miles wide according to reports provided.
Another note, Starlink launched several satellites at the beginning of the 2024 year. These satellites were launched specifically to provide cell phone coverage for T-Mobile subscribers and will eventually provide unlimited cell service anywhere. The information can be found anywhere on the internet if you're curious. The day after the storm I was able to connect to one of these satellites and send text messages to family in Tennessee to let them know I was ok. It isn't a flawless system but it's my understanding that it'll improve with time.
Any radio system that relies on repeaters for wide area coverage, are useless without electricity. Although our ham radio community had repeater coverage it was limited due to utilizing back up batteries. If the batteries can't be re-charged then the ham radio repeaters are as much dead in the water as a cell tower.
