It isn't just the restoration of electricity that state officials are concerned with; they are also monitoring the response from wireless phone, cable and Internet providers.
In fact, representatives from the cable and wireless industries were summoned to the state's Emergency Operations Center on Monday to discuss their plans for dealing with the storm's many disruptions.
"We're all so dependent now on that cable and on the Internet,'' said Daniel C. Esty, commissioner of Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, "so we were pushing very hard on that front.''
Esty, whose department regulates public utilities, said officials heard from residents across the state upset that they lost their Internet access in the storm's aftermath. "We had some people with electricity but they did not have the Internet and cable back,'' he said, "so we called the cable guys and said 'we want you down here to talk to us about what you're doing.'''
Following that meeting, which Esty said Malloy attended, cable providers dispatched additional repair crews. "We have been leaning on them as we have been leaning on the mobile phone companies,'' Esty said.
State officials said they grew concerned Monday when mobile telecommunications began to degrade. The storm knocked out power to several key transmission towers. The towers run on a back up battery, but after a day or day, the batteries begin to run out of juice, Esty said. "As soon as we saw that happening, we jumped on it and brought the phoine companies in and said 'look, this isn't good enough, we need to do better.'''
Late Monday, after the meeting, 75 generators were brought to cell towers across the state; several mobile towers were also set up. Both of those steps improved cell service, Esty said.
While state regulators have been flooded with complaints from residents and businesses that have lost Internet and mobile phone service, "the number of poeple calling [about] landlines that are down is in the single digit thousands,'' he observed. "We got virtually no complaints about landlines until people's cell phone batteries started to die.''
Losing Internet and mobile phone service is not quite the same thing as losing electricity, Esty acknowledged. But for many, it is more than a small inconvenience.
"People have become very much focused not only on electricity which is critical, but frankly the Internet is the lifeline of many people,'' he said. "The Internet today is the Yellow Pages, it's the emergency phone contact information, it's your lifeline when you don't have a television as to what the information picture is. People are highly dependent on the Internet and, ironically, not very dependent on their landlines anymore...it's a new day.
"We're keeping careful notes on the lessons learned here and emergency plans will be adjusted going forward.''
