T-Mobile and AT&T Will Share Networks in Storm-Damaged Areas

6:08 p.m. | Updated

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, much of lower Manhattan has completely lost electricity and cell reception. T-Mobile USA and AT&T said on Wednesday that in the affected areas of New York and New Jersey, their customers would be able to use the networks of both companies, decreasing the likelihood of failed calls.

In a statement, T-Mobile USA said that when customers of both AT&T and T-Mobile place calls, the calls would be carried by whichever network is available in the area. Both networks use similar technologies, so switching between them will be seamless, and there will not be an additional charge, the company said.

One quarter of the transmission sites in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy were knocked out, the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday. Verizon Wireless said 6 percent of its cell sites were down in the storm-damaged areas, T-Mobile said roughly 20 percent of its net work was down in New York City and 10 percent in Washington, and Sprint and AT&T said some of their sites had failed in badly hit areas as well.

“Our assumption is that communication outages could get worse before they get better,” Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, told reporters in a conference call Tuesday afternoon. “I want to emphasize that the storm is not over.”

Neville Ray, chief technology officer of T-Mobile USA, said that AT&T and T-Mobile had made a similar network-sharing agreement in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But he said that Hurricane Sandy was the biggest natural disaster he had ever dealt with, and that service failures were inevitable. The loss of power in storm-ravaged areas has caused cell sites to go down, and backup battery systems have drained, he said.

“There's an amount of preparation you can do, but depending on the size and scale and impact on the storm, it's tough to anticipate every circumstance,” he said in an interview. “No degree of preparation can prevent some of those outages from happening.”

In anticipation of the storm, carriers prepared trucks containing cell towers, called C.O.W.'s for cell on wheels, to provide service in areas where there are failures. But there are still wide areas of lower Manhattan with little or no cell coverage. Mr. Ray said that carriers have to assess when it is safe for employees to move these emergency vehicles onto the road and turn on the services. He said the company was looking at key areas in Manhattan to deploy the trucks.