ORLANDO, Fla. - As the communities impacted by Hurricane Charley in Florida work together to assess damage and restore basic services; Nextel Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:NXTL) continues to respond aggressively to ensure that our wireless services operate at expected levels for Public Safety, First Responders, and all other customers.
“Nextel’s number one concern is for the safety and well being of our customers, employees and the community,” said Tom Gawronski, regional vice president for Nextel’s south region. “As part of our emergency preparedness plan, Nextel has been working around the clock since before the hurricane hit Florida and we will continue these efforts as long as they are needed.”
During the aftermath of Hurricane Charley, Nextel is actively assisting first responders and public safety agencies with handsets, priority services, and additional network resources. Nextel has provisioned over 40,000 first responders with Priority Connect on their Direct Connect service, accelerated implementation of Wireless Priority Service into the Florida market and donated handsets and activations to over 1,900 emergency responder customers on this new service. Nextel has deployed nearly 300 mobile generators and four Satellite Cell sites on Wheels (SatCOLT) to facilitate network restoration and augmentation efforts throughout Florida. These services extend to support for traditional emergency responders like police, fire and emergency medical services (EMS) as well as utilities, disaster-relief workers and government agencies at the federal, state and local levels.
As a result of the hurricane, only a small, but important, percentage of Nextel sites across Florida were impacted and most of those sites are now fully operational. The greatest impact was in and around Ft. Myers, Florida where the hurricane made landfall. These site outages were caused by the loss of power that affected more than 1 million homes and businesses throughout Florida and the disablement of cell site transport (T1s), the landline service that connects the cell sites to the switches. Nextel is dependent on the LEC (Local (telephone) Exchange Carrier) for the cell site transport services, but not for Direct Connect communications, and will continue to work closely with the LEC operations team to restore the T1s in the most expeditious manner.
With Nextel Nationwide Direct Connect(SM) and International Direct Connect(SM), plus Cell sites on Wheels (COWs) and mobile SatCOLTs Nextel has the unique ability to move quickly and effectively respond to unpredictable emergencies, both natural and manmade. Priority Connect allows designated public safety dispatch calls to receive a higher priority, increasing the likelihood that Nextel Direct Connect(R) - the incredibly powerful long-range walkie-talkie feature - and Emergency Group Connect calls will go through during times of potential network congestion. Priority Connect intelligently applies levels of priority, based on classifications set by federal guidelines, ranging from federal and state executives to disaster recovery personnel. Wireless Priority Service (WPS) allows authorized National Security and Emergency Preparedness personnel to make cellular calls during an emergency when channels may be congested. WPS is overseen by the National Communications System a division of the Department of Homeland Security and was developed to meet a White House directive.
About Nextel
Nextel Communications, a FORTUNE 200 company based in Reston, Va., is a leading provider of fully integrated wireless communications services and has built the largest guaranteed all-digital wireless network in the country covering thousands of communities across the United States. Today 95 percent of FORTUNE 500(R) companies are Nextel customers. Nextel and Nextel Partners, Inc. currently serve 296 of the top 300 U.S. markets where approximately 252 million people live or work.
