Phone companies prepare backup plans for Gustav

The hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast could be a test for the country's wireless carriers, which faced criticism and a regulatory push after Hurricane Katrina took out networks. Gustav slammed Jamaica on Friday, and forecasters said it could hit the Louisiana coast at the beginning of next week as a major hurricane. If so, wireless networks would have two main vulnerabilities. The cell towers may be unhurt by the buffeting winds of a hurricane, but to keep working, each one needs electrical power and a connection to the larger network, usually via landline. After Katrina, the Federal Communications Commission seized on the power issue, and sought to mandate that almost all cell sites in the U.S. have at least eight hours of backup power in the event main power fails. But that requirement has been held up by court challenges from wireless industry association CTIA, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA. The carriers said the FCC failed to follow federal guidelines for creating new mandates and went far beyond its authority in creating the requirement. Requiring each cell site, even in areas that aren't disaster-prone, to have its own backup power is expensive and robs them of the flexibility to deploy generators in more sensitive areas, they said.