Cingular Wireless Offers Consumer Tips to Help Prepare for Hurricane Jeanne in North Florida
24 Septembre 2004 - 6:00PM
PR Newswire (US)
Cingular Wireless Offers Consumer Tips to Help Prepare for
Hurricane Jeanne in North Florida Company readies generators,
network personnel and sets up emergency staging areas LAKE MARY,
Fla., Sept. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Hurricane Jeanne, a category 2
system with winds up to 100 mph, is gaining speed and is
threatening to hit the east coast of Florida over the weekend. A
report from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) at 8am EDT on
Friday, September 24 stated that Jeanne is moving toward the west
at nearly 8 mph and this motion is expected to continue with some
increase in forward speed during the next 24 hours. A hurricane
watch is in effect for the east coast of Florida, from Florida City
to St. Augustine, including Lake Okeechobee. The system's hurricane
force winds are extending up 45 miles from the center and tropical
force winds extend up to 140 miles. With more than 150,000 calls
placed every day to emergency personnel from wireless phones,
Cingular wants consumers to know how to prepare. "Taking the time
to plan now can make a considerable difference in how much a
hurricane affects your family or business," says Dan Norman, vice
president/general manager, Cingular Wireless-North Florida. "Any
emergency plan should include a wireless communications component,
too, so that every member of the family knows who to contact if
they get separated." The company also plans to set up emergency
calling stations in the hardest hit areas so individuals without
power or phone service are able to make phone calls at no charge to
loved ones anywhere in the United States. What can you do to
prepare yourself for an emergency? - Learn your text messaging
feature on your phone. This is an easy way to send a quick message
to a loved one's cell phone if you can't call them. - Program in
all of your emergency contact numbers. Program in 9-1-1, the police
department, fire station and hospital contact numbers, as well as
your family members into your cell phone. - Have a family
communications plan in place. Designate someone out of the area as
a central contact, and make certain all family members know who to
contact if they become separated. - Monitor weather alerts and
bulletins. Wireless Internet access can help you keep abreast of
important weather alerts during power outages or when access to a
TV or radio is unavailable. - Keep your wireless phone dry and
phone batteries charged at all times. - Forward your home number to
your wireless number in the event of an evacuation. That way you
will get incoming calls from your landline phone. - Consider
additional cell phones or prepaid phones for your family's
emergency use. Cingular's Hurricane Jeanne Preparations - Refueling
back up generators and testing all fixed and portable generators to
ensure they are functioning properly. - Deploying teams of
engineers and technicians to targeted areas of the state to monitor
back up power at cell sites. - Executing rapid response network
staging areas in Lakeland, Lake Mary and Margate where additional
emergency equipment and personnel can be quickly deployed to the
impacted areas of the state. - Staging over 500 additional
generators from nearby states to be deployed from Florida staging
areas as needed. - Placing additional network technicians from
other states, crews of electricians and other specialized personnel
on stand by. - Florida call centers are automatically linked with
centers in other states and calls can be re-routed so customers can
contact us when they need to. - Retail locations will be open as
long as possible to provide assistance to customers while
considering mandatory evacuation orders and employees' personal
safety. - Cingular retail locations throughout the state continue
to accept donations for the American Red Cross through the month of
September to support hurricane relief. - To ensure that emergency
responders have access to wireless communications, Cingular has
provided over 1,500 phones to emergency agencies throughout the
state. Cingular Wireless is Prepared for Severe Weather -
Cingular's Regional Network Operations Center (RNOC) monitors and
maintains its wireless network 24 hours a day, seven days a week so
they can quickly assess and respond to an emergency situation
within minutes. - Towers and switching centers are designed and
built to withstand hurricane-force winds. - As electrical outages
are common during storms, Cingular's switching centers have back-up
emergency generators. All cell sites have high- capacity battery
back-up and some have emergency generators, ensuring a secure
source for power. A fleet of portable generators are also available
to provide additional power source, if needed. - Cingular has a
fleet of portable, self-contained mobile cell sites (known as
"COWS" or "COLTS"), that can be towed or driven into an area to
provide extra call capacity or to restore communications following
a disaster. About Cingular Wireless Cingular Wireless, a joint
venture between SBC Communications (NYSE:SBC) and BellSouth
(NYSE:BLS), serves more than 25 million voice and data customers
across the United States. A leader in mobile voice and data
communications, Cingular is the only U.S. wireless carrier to offer
Rollover(SM), the wireless plan that lets customers keep their
unused monthly minutes. Cingular is the largest provider of GSM
services in the United States, and has a 100 percent digital
GSM/GPRS footprint across its service area. It also launched the
world's first commercial deployment of wireless services using
Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) technology. Cingular
also provides corporate e-mail and other advanced data services
through its GPRS, EDGE and Mobitex packet data networks. Details of
the company are available at http://www.cingular.com/ . DATASOURCE:
Cingular Wireless CONTACT: Dawn Benton of Cingular Wireless,
+1-404-236-5305, or wireless, +1-404-202-6335, or Web site:
http://www.cingular.com/
Copyright
Bellsouth (NYSE:BLS)
Graphique Historique de l'Action
De Juil 2024 à Août 2024
Bellsouth (NYSE:BLS)
Graphique Historique de l'Action
De Août 2023 à Août 2024
Real-Time news about Bellsouth Cp (New York Stock Exchange): 0 recent articles
Plus d'articles sur Bellsouth Cp