>From a WISP in USVI
A quick perspective from the US Virgin Islands of how the carriers have fared /
performed:
AT&T = had a couple towers with some cell coverage after Irma and Maria. A
testament to good engineering at the tower, and redundancy in their network
design. Primarily microwave backhaul, but leasing some fiber from the ILEC
named Viya. AT&T has a major undersea cable station and POP on STT in downtown
Charlotte Amalie. They have been making progress fixing their network, STX is
over 50% fixed 2 weeks after Maria. 75% market share
Sprint = 100% down for the 3+ weeks after Irma. They have a single point of
failure, relying on 10ft dishes to shoot 20-50 miles, from STT to Puerto Rico.
These cheap bastards wouldn’t buy a backup connection from Viya or Broadband
VI. I have called them out to the PSC. Still weeks away from anything
working. Most of their customers can roam on Viya’s cell network. 15% market
share and rapidly declining.
Viya = Celluar = 30-50% up, Celluar = 10% market share. Rolling out LTE
upgrade.
Cable TV/Phone/Internet = 10% up, 75% market share, have a long road to
recovery. Have to wait for power company poles to be replaced / fixed before
they can repair their badly damaged plant.
Broadband VI = WISP = 50% AP's up, 15% of customers. Got up quickly after
Irma, STX stayed up, STT had backhaul to every major tower repaired in 5 days.
After Maria 100% down. Had to re-aim / repair every major tower on STX, and
most of STT. Moving focus from backhaul to repairing AP’s next week. Tower by
tower, with installers / subs going to customers in that area (who have power,
almost all via generator). In the middle of a Mikrotik 2 Cambium 450 forklift
upgrade. Impressive survival rate for Cambium AP’s, and Ceragon IP-20.
viNGN = Government fiber middle-mile, lost 90% of their drops because there
were aerial.
I am off to guide the FEMA re-fuelers to a remote tower which ran out of fuel
last night.
There have been some lessons learned. I will compile a report in the next few
weeks.
Mike Meluskey
CTO and Founder
Broadband VI
-----
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions
http://www.ics-il.com
Midwest-IX
http://www.midwest-ix.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Javier J <jav...@advancedmachines.us>
To: Jean-Francois Mezei <jfmezei_na...@vaxination.ca>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Sent: Sat, 07 Oct 2017 03:02:46 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: Hurricane Maria: Summary of communication status - and lack of
@ Jean
Interesting stuff. Please keep this thread updated with info on that
initiative.
On Fri, Oct 6, 2017 at 9:55 PM, Jean-Francois Mezei <
jfmezei_na...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
> I have not ound the official announcements, but the press is reporting
> that the FCC has granted Google rights to fly 30 of its "Loon" high
> altitude ballons to provide cellular cervice in Puerto Rico for up to 6
> months.
>
> (From my readings, there are glorified relays of ground based signals
> (which I assume some antennas have to be oriented to face up towards the
> balloons).
>
> The Loon will use spectrum allocated to the carriers they relay (and got
> their OK)
>
> Altitude 20km. (so not sure they need 30 balloons, 1 probably suffices
> to cover all of PR).
>
> I suspect more concrete info will be coming.
>
