While much of the eastern side of the country continues to grapple with the effects of Hurricane Helene (in particular western North Carolina which had many towns wiped off the map), restoring cellular communication has been a top priority to locate and aid those currently affected.
In order to do that, cellular communication providers have enabled something called “disaster roaming” in the effected areas, this type of roaming services allows customers of any mobile phone company to use any available cell tower. Normally, cell towers are maintained and restricted to certain companies. So, for example, you may find as an AT&T customer you have better service in one locations vs another. With disaster roaming turned on this would no longer be the case.
What does this have to do with the Verizon outage that occurred this week? Well, this unplanned outage that affected as of writing caused over 100,000 reports from customers on DownDetector.com, a site that reports service complaints, also affected the areas currently recovering from Hurricane Helene.
Users reported their phones being stuck in “SOS” mode, and after several hours issued a statement that their engineers had fixed the issue and that anyone still affected should try restarting their phones. During the outage the company’s response was underwhelming, in many cases just informing customers they were “aware of the issue”.
The timing of this outage and the announcement that disaster roaming was turned on in certain areas is also possibly worth investigating, though no announcement on the cause of the outage has been revealed at this time.
This is also not the first time we’ve written about a major cellular outage (AT&T and T-Mobile have had their fair share as well). Disasters like the one currently ongoing in North Carolina highlight our need to have effective ways to communicate in times of an emergency and it is past time that cellular companies be held to a higher standard when it comes to communicating and addressing outages that can have drastic consequences for their customers.
Effective communication is an important part of running a business, if you’re not making your customers aware of your intentions then you’re leaving it up to them to draw conclusions on your behalf. Below are five ways Valley Techlogic addresses communicating with clients who have a technology service plan with us:
Don’t settle for underwhelming or non-existent communication on the services you pay for, learn more about how Valley Techlogic can support your business today with a free consultation.
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This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, leading provider of trouble free IT services for businesses in California including Merced, Fresno, Stockton & More. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/valley-techlogic-inc/.
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