After Sandy, Questions Linger Over Cellphone Reliability

Roughly one in four cellphone towers in the path of Hurricane Sandy went out of service. It was a frustrating and potentially dangerous experience for customers without a landline to fall back on. Now, local officials and communications experts are pushing providers to improve their performance during natural disasters.

In the city of Long Beach (NY), all the cell towers went down during Sandy. City Manager Jack Schnirman described the experience at a recent Federal Communications Commission hearing on how cellphone networks held up, or didn't, during the storm. "There was one woman in particular who passed away, of natural causes, an elderly woman," he said. "And her daughter had to walk literally a mile and a half from her home to police headquarters just to say, 'Listen, my mom has passed, and I thought I should tell somebody.' " To prepare for the next disaster, Schnirman wants better access to "Cell on Wheels," or COWs. They're cell towers that can be moved from place to place. He wants backup power, like generators, at cell towers. And he wants better access to the cell providers themselves. He said he didn't even know whom to call during Sandy.