October 2012

Our deepest condolences go out to those who lost loved ones as a result of the storm. And our deepest gratitude goes to the first responders and other emergency teams who are working tirelessly in the recovery efforts. This was, and remains, a devastating storm, and the FCC continues to assess and respond to the impact of Hurricane Sandy on our nation’s communications infrastructure.

Overall, the condition of our communications networks is improving, but serious outages remain, particularly in New York, New Jersey, and other hard-hit areas. We are continuing to work closely with FEMA and our other federal, state, and local partners – as well as communications companies – in response efforts. In the days and weeks ahead, we will continue to expect the unexpected as the full picture of Hurricane Sandy’s impact on communications networks develops. The crisis is not over. We’ll continue to be intensely focused on helping with the full recovery of wired and wireless communications infrastructure.

[Commentary] Twitter is often a cauldron of snark, much of it funny, little of it useful. But as a social medium based on short-burst communication, Twitter can morph during large events — users talk about “watching” the spectacle unfold across their screens. It is, after all, a real-time service, which means that you can “see” what is happening as it happens. And then along came Hurricane Sandy.

For most of Oct 29, people on Twitter were watching an endless loop of hurricane coverage on television and having some fun with it, which is the same thing that happens when the Grammys or the Super Bowl is on. But as the storm bore down, Twitter got busy and very, very serious. In the early days of Twitter, there was a very big debate about whether reporters should break news on Twitter. That debate now seems quaint. Plenty of short-burst nuggets of news went out from reporters on Twitter on Oct 29 and they were quickly followed by more developed reports on-air or on the Web. Some people used the friction-free, democratic nature of the medium to intentionally stir panic although John Herrman, writing in BuzzFeed, suggested that “Twitter is a Truth Machine,” writing that “during Sandy, the Internet spread — then crushed — rumors at breakneck speed.”

Sandvine, a company selling deep-packet inspection gear to Internet service providers, shared a blog post that in one East Coast city on the Monday ahead of Sandy’s landfall in New Jersey, Internet traffic was up 114 percent. Sandvine also tracked a more than 150 percent rise in Netflix traffic, which was later confirmed by Netflix. Skype usage was up as well. The Sandvine post noted that, “No single application was responsible for the surge; usage patterns were, for the most part, similar to what is observed on weekday evenings.” While the uptick in entertainment seems obvious, the results should encourage those worried about whether our networks can handle some problem that forces workers to stay home and attempt to telecommute. Apparently they can, or they can until the power goes out and the floodwaters swamp the telecommunications infrastructure.

Here is a lesson every Web site manager may be taking away from Hurricane Sandy: It is probably not a good idea to put the backup power generators where it floods.

As computer centers in Lower Manhattan and New Jersey shut down or went to emergency operations after power failures and water damage, companies scrambled to move the engines of modern communication to other parts of the country. Others rushed to find fuel for backup power generation. In some cases, things just stopped. As more of life moves online, damage to critical Internet systems affect more of the economy, and disasters like Hurricane Sandy reveal vulnerabilities from the sometimes ad hoc organization of computer networks. In places like Manhattan, advanced technology comes up against aging infrastructure and space constraints, forcing servers and generators to use whatever space is available. Power is the primary worry, since an abrupt network shutdown can destroy data, but problems can also stem from something as simple as not keeping a crisis plan updated.