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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/

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