Carriers step up Superstorm Sandy recovery efforts

As recovery efforts continue in the Northeast US, mobile carriers are working to restore their own operations in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Verizon said that its facilities in New York which manage its enterprise cloud computing services and communications services for small business and consumer customers have been restored, but are operating on backup power generators.

The company warned that though the facilities have been brought back online, ongoing fuel shortages could threaten to shut down some of the facilities should power outages linger. Authorities in New York City have warned that outages could continue for several more days in some areas.

Verizon said that it is also working to redeploy technicians from other areas into the New York and New Jersey regions to help speed up repair efforts on its network.

The company is one of numerous IT vendors to take a major hit from the superstorm. When the storm made land in the area earlier this week, a number of datacenter facilities in New York were knocked offline by flood damage or power outages.

As rescue and recovery efforts continue in the areas hardest hit by the storm, carriers are working furiously to bring their networks back online in order to provide vital mobile phone access to citizens without power. Authorities have advised users to keep their handsets charged and available should they require emergency services.

Earlier in the week, AT&T and T-Mobile announced a joint plan to make their networks available to customers of both companies in the hurricane-impacted regions. Both Verizon and AT&T have promised to contribute funds to recovery efforts.