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Cingular Wireless Responds to Earthquake in HawaiiHONOLULU, Oct. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Cingular Wireless said today that it has restored service to 98 percent of its cell sites in Hawaii following the earthquake there on Sunday and expects the remaining sites to be operational shortly. All Cingular stores in the state are open for business and serving customers. Cingular conducts ongoing readiness drills throughout the year and has a rigorous emergency preparedness and response process in place for events like this earthquake. "Our primary goal is to fully restore service as quickly as possible," said Tammi Terrell, vice president and general manager for Cingular in Hawaii. "When a natural disaster occurs, our dedicated network team works around the clock to ensure that happens." In addition to delivering back-up generators and batteries to cell sites where needed, Cingular is deploying a COW (cellular on wheels), a portable wireless facility, to the Big Island of Hawaii where a cell site was damaged by the earthquake. Cingular offers consumers these tips to help stay in touch during an emergency: - Try text messaging, or SMS (Short Messaging Service). Most wireless phones today are text-messaging capable, and often times during an emergency situation such as an earthquake, text messages will go through more quickly than voice calls. More importantly, using text messaging helps free up the voice lines for emergency officials. - Keep non-emergency calls to a minimum. Keep lines open for emergency personnel. Remember to limit your calls to the most important ones. Chances are, many people will be attempting to place wireless calls to loved ones, friends and business associates. If the landline phones are not working, this probability increases. - Wait 10 seconds before redialing a call. On many wireless phones, to redial a number, you simply push "send" after you've ended a call to redial the previous number. If you do this too quickly, the data from the phone to the cell sites does not have enough time to clear before you've resent the same data and may contribute to network congestion. - Use your wireless phone to access news information. Many homes lose power during earthquakes and severe weather. If you have a wireless phone that provides access to the Internet, you can watch or read the latest news at your favorite news link or keep track of the weather on the Weather Channel through Cingular's MEdiaNet service. - If you have a camera phone, take, store and send photos of damaged property to your insurance company from your wireless device. - Use a landline phone if it is available. In many instances, landline service may still be available in your area so this still may be an option. About Cingular Wireless Cingular Wireless is the largest wireless carrier in the United States, serving 57.3 million customers. Cingular, a joint venture between AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corporation , has the largest digital voice and data network in the nation -- the ALLOVER(TM) network -- and the largest mobile-to-mobile community of any national wireless carrier. Cingular is a leader in third generation wireless technology. Its 3G network is the first widely available service in the world to use HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) technology. Cingular is the only U.S. wireless carrier to offer Rollover(R), the wireless plan that lets customers keep their unused monthly minutes. Details of the company are available at http://www.cingular.com/. Get Cingular Wireless press releases emailed to you automatically. Sign up at http://cingular.mediaroom.com/. Cingular Wireless CONTACT: Michael Broom of Cingular Wireless, +1-425-580-7710, or cell,+1-206-390-5993, or [email protected] Web site: http://www.cingular.com/http://cingular.mediaroom.com/ |