Phillip “Do you want to depend on AT&T for phone service that could be gone with the wind for weeks?” Dampier

Superstorm Sandy is getting credit for exposing the thin veneer of the “wireless future” some phone companies want to give their most rural customers after disconnecting their home phone lines in favor of wireless service.

Unfortunately for the providers selling you on the wireless revolution, reality intruded last month when Category 1 Hurricane Sandy arrived. In its wake, the storm obliterated a significant amount of wireless phone service for weeks in some of the most urbanized sections of the country, while leaving underground, traditional wired phone service largely untouched.

The storm that blew into the northeastern U.S. Oct. 29 left a legacy of interrupted or inadequate cell service that lasted more than two weeks. AT&T and Verizon Wireless reported their networks were not fully restored until Nov. 15. Sprint and T-Mobile are still addressing some issues with their networks as of today.

Although the storm was enormous in scope, it was only a Category 1 hurricane. It could have been much worse.

So where did things go wrong?

Although some sites lost their wired backhaul connection which connects the tower to the provider, the biggest problem was commercial power interruption. Without power, many providers were caught flat-footed with inadequate on-site backup plans to keep cell towers up and running until regular power could be restored.

The wireless industry fought tooth and nail against common sense regulations proposed by the Federal Communications Commission after Hurricane Katrina devastated infrastructure and power facilities in southern Louisiana and Mississippi.

The FCC proposed that every cell tower be equipped with on site battery backup equipment that could sustain service for a minimum of eight hours — sufficient time for power to be restored or company engineers to arrive with more robust generators.

Providers howled about the cost of outfitting the nation’s 200,000 cell sites with even a conservative amount of backup power. The cellular industry lobbying group and Sprint sued, calling it a wasteful and unnecessary mandate. The Bush Administration eventually dropped the whole matter in November 2008 as part of its war on “burdensome” regulation.

Since then, providers have been free to design their own emergency backup plans, or have none at all. Few have made those detailed plans public, giving customers information about how likely their cell phone will work in the event of a disaster.

Verizon Wireless has been the most aggressive, voluntarily adopting the proposed FCC standards and outfitting all of their cell sites with a minimum of eight hours of battery backup power. Other providers have backup facilities at some sites, often with lower capacity batteries that won’t last as long.

Sandy illustrated that even eight hours might be inadequate. Many cell sites were on generator power for more than a week, assuming engineers could regularly reach each tower with equipment and fuel.

Other cell sites could not be returned to service immediately because of major wind damage or flooding. Those that were in service were often overburdened by enormous call volumes.

Meanwhile, unless your landline provider’s central office was flooded, your phone line kept working during and after the storm, especially if your neighborhood wiring is buried underground.

In many cases, it was the only thing working, because traditional phone lines are independently powered and not dependent on electric service in your home to operate. That is what kept your dial tone humming even as your smartphone’s battery ran out.

Ironically, the network that performed the best through the storm is the same one AT&T and Verizon would like to phase out, starting in rural areas. AT&T wants to completely abandon wired service in its most rural service areas, where calling and waiting for emergency assistance is already a hindrance. AT&T plans to spend billions to bolster its rural cell tower network to cover the landline areas it wants to abandon, but those communities would be entirely dependent on the reliability of that network, because AT&T’s competitors are unlikely to build additional infrastructure to compete.

As Sandy just demonstrated, if high-profit Manhattan customers could not be assured of reliable cell phone service from any company that provide service there, how likely is it that a customer in rural Kansas will be in real trouble summoning help over AT&T’s wireless infrastructure in the event of a cell tower failure, wiping out the only telecommunications service available in nearby towns?

The United States once led the world in Internet speed and infrastructure. Now, according to one estimate, it ranks at about 29. Brooke talks to David Cay Johnston, journalist and author of “The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use Plain English to Rob You Blind,” who says that companies continue to raise prices and engage in lobbying efforts to rewrite regulation, while avoiding necessary upgrades to infrastructure that would speed up America’s Internet.  Companies promised major fiber broadband upgrades, but diverted that money to building a wireless conglomerate instead. (6 minutes)

Rural Americans already depend on their satellite dish to receive hundreds of channels of television entertainment, but broadband over satellite has traditionally been slow, limited and very expensive.

There is little evidence things will change quickly for those without access to traditional cable or phone company DSL. But the launch of new, higher capacity satellites, have at least increased satellite broadband speeds and eased back on extremely low usage caps under a provider’s “fair access policy.”

This week, Viasat’s Exede broadband pricing through DirecTV was formally announced. The “up to 12Mbps” service will cost:

• $39.99 for 10GB of monthly usage;
• $69.99 for 15GB;
• $119.99 for 25GB

These discounted prices are good for the first year of a two year contract. Prices increase $10 a month for the second year. Contract customers will have the $49.99 installation fee credited back on a future invoice.

There is one significant improvement: the satellite service removes the data cap between 12 midnight-5am daily – good for automated downloads, software updates and any other high bandwidth applications.

Customers have until Jan. 31 to sign up for the promotion.

Wall Street pans AT&T’s plans to spend billions to upgrade and expand its U-verse service.

Wall Street credit ratings agencies are unhappy with AT&T’s plans to increase spending on its broadband network to upgrade U-verse speeds and provide the fiber to the neighborhood service to more customers.

First, Moody’s placed AT&T’s “ratings on review for downgrade,” because AT&T’s plan to spend $22 billion to upgrade service and repurchase its own shares would throw AT&T’s debt level too high. Now Fitch Ratings has gone further, telling clients it has “downgraded” AT&T with a “negative outlook” because the phone company will spend money to provide U-verse to customers not profitable quickly enough to make the spending worthwhile.

Several Wall Street firms question the return on investment providing Internet service in rural areas where capital costs are higher. But many investment analysts are more positive about AT&T’s wireless service, which delivers substantial profits in much shorter time periods. Fitch called AT&T’s investments in LTE 4G service positive and important as Verizon Wireless continues to build and expand its own 4G LTE network.

Clearwire wants a divorce from customers it deems are using the wireless broadband service too much — as in around 5GB per month, despite the fact many of those customers pay for “unlimited” accounts.

Broadband Reports says several ex-customers are now complaining on Twitter about their abrupt, involuntary departure this week as paying customers, despite company promises that advance warnings would be sent if a customer was engaged in “excessive use.”

“One user excessively running heavy bandwidth applications can adversely affect the speeds and service quality for their neighbors,” Clearwire told Broadband Reports. “It is rare that we take this step and when we do it affects an extremely small percentage of our total user base. We typically contact users to notify them of this type of situation first in order to provide an opportunity to make necessary changes.”

Broadband Reports:

How much usage was considered too much? Clearwire won’t get specific, but one of the users tells Broadband Reports Clearwire informed him he’d breached 5 GB three months in a row — which frankly doesn’t sound excessive for a modern wireless network.

Clear began throttling heavy users on unlimited accounts to around 256kbps back in 2010. They’ve never really been specific about what triggers the throttled state for users, given it appears to be calculated on the fly based on local tower congestion — so what triggers throttling may be different in different markets. It’s not entirely clear why throttling these users back to 256 kbps wasn’t substantial enough of a punishment for these “fired” customers.