Re: Hurricane Maria: Summary of communication status - and lack of

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

The Puerto Rico government has posted threee maps of cellular coverage and 
GPS coordinates of Cells on Wheels (COWs) in service.

http://www.status.pr/Maps/

It still looks grim in Puerto Ricofrom a telecommunications perspective. 
Its will be an interesting after-action study.  Other than "it was a 
hurricane," I haven't gotten a good idea why so much of the 
telecommunications network failed and backups still aren't working more 
than 2 weeks later.

Claro, the ILEC but second in terms of mobile phone marketshare behind 
AT&T, has started to more fully explain what "restored" means, and that 
it doesn't mean everything as before the hurricane.  It is minimum 
telecommunications.  Claro has been more willing to talk about the 
situation in Puerto Rico, which is why I've referencing Claro a lot more 
than other carriers.

This is a google translate of an interview from spanish.

"It is important to clarify that the radio bases put into service to date, 
offer the same voice and data services as before the impact of the 
Hurricane. In other words, if the base radio is 4GLTE, that is the service 
it will offer. The other two components that influence the customer 
experience are the voice and data plan and the equipment of each user."

"The network is also open to third-party customers as part of our 
commitment to connect everyone in the country. In fact, over a quarter of 
a million customers from other providers have connected daily to the Claro 
network. When these customers connect to our network they only have voice 
service as stipulated in the roaming agreement with the other providers.
As for the fixed network, this morning the service was restored in the 
central offices (OC) of Fajardo and Humacao, whose optical fibers had been 
affected by the destruction of Hurricane Maria. In this way already have 
fixed voice, internet and long distance services in these municipalities: 
Ceiba, Fajardo, Luquillo, Humacao, Naguabo and Yabucoa. Already a total of 
57 municipalities have all 3 services. It is possible that some customers 
of Claro served by these OCs do not have internet. This is possible as 
there could be cables and posts broken and / or VRADs without AEE 
service."

https://www.metro.pr/pr/noticias/2017/10/06/senal-claro-esta-ya-accesible-34-municipios.html