TeleContinuity offers survivable communication solution

communication chain which are likely to fail during a disaster. The failure of each one of them would cause massive problems, let alone the simultaneous collapse of all three:

Local loop. The last-mile communication service to the customer depends on copper wires or fiber optic cables extending, either above ground or below ground, from the carrier’s central office to the customer’s premises. This last mile connectivity between the business and its telephone provider, Internet provider, or application service provider may be severely disrupted, if not cut-off altogether, during a disaster as wires and cables are torn and underground tunnels flooded. Cell towers and the equipment mounted on them are often also destroyed during a disaster, as are the last mile circuits which connect these cell towers to the local telephone network.

Long haul. Copper wires and fiber optic cables also connect the local telephone company’s central offices to other central offices in the region and to long-distance providers, cell phone carriers, and Internet and data communications service providers around the country and around the world. These inter-exchange or “long haul” circuits provide for interconnectivity and communication beyond the local area. The cables and wires used for long haul are as vulnerable to disruption as those used in the local loop — but there is a difference: There are many more subscribers who use these long haul circuits, and these circuits carry many more calls, so carriers would typically employ “circuit diversity,” that is, they would construct the system so that there are multiple paths available for voice and data on which to travel. If one path which is part of the long haul circuit is blocked, then the voice or data would automatically use another path to reach their destination. Kennedy notes that this may work well in cases of isolated disasters such as localized fires and floods, but when the level of destruction is catastrophic and wide-spread, as was the case in Hurricane Katrina, the Mississippi River floods of a decade ago, and even as a result of serious tornadoes in the Midwest section of the United States, then this circuit diversity would not be of much help because the alternative paths also fall victim to the disaster.

Power. Without power nothing will work. Some central offices and cell phone sites may have emergency power sources such as batteries and stand-alone generators which may suffice for a few hours or days of