In the days following the Dec. 11 ice storm, utility services have slowly returned to normal. Response to outages has varied by provider, due partly to differences in urgency and partly to differences in complexity. According to Police Chief Ed Denmark, town and public safety officials focused solely on restoration of electric services, and did not concern themselves with communication outages. Businesses and homeowners were on their own dealing with Verizon and Charter to get telephone and Internet service restored.
For those who did not lose power, or who partially restored power with a generator, communication issues fell into several categories:
- A lucky few did not lose service. There were no lines down between their location and the central office. Shaker Hills, with underground utilities and connections coming from Ayer, was the largest area in this category.
- Verizon service lost (telephone, DSL Internet)
- Charter service lost (cable TV, Internet, telephone)
- Some combination of Verizon and Charter service lost
For those who lost power and did not have a generator, loss of communications was a secondary concern, and in most cases, could not be determined until power was restored. This was not totally true, however, as old-fashioned wired telephone service does not depend on power beyond the central office (456 exchange in Harvard center, 772 exchange in Ayer), and such central offices usually have backup generators that kick in whenever power fails. Modern telephone handsets require power, but many people keep an old-style handset around to use in such emergencies. Many who lost power but have Verizon telephone service reported being able to make and receive phone calls throughout the outage.
Charter telephone subscribers who lost power were not so fortunate. Beyond the eight hours of optional battery backup in telephone modems, even if Charter service wasn’t down, Charter subscribers without power lost their telephone service. Incoming calls went to voicemail, which could be checked via cell phone, but otherwise they were out of luck until power was restored.
According to Selectmen Chairman Leo Blair, there was a necessary sequence for restoration of service—tree clearing and downed poles restored first, then power, then telephone lines, then cable. The tree crews (or some of the many town volunteers) would come in and clear the downed branches and trees. If utility poles had to be replaced, Verizon would do that (the company owns the poles in Harvard), then National Grid would repair or replace wires and electrical components. If telephone lines were compromised, Verizon would repair those, and finally, if cable lines or components were compromised, Charter could send in its crews.
In some cases when power was restored, the communication services came back up immediately. That was the experience of the Press, with power restored at the Littleton Road office early Thursday afternoon (seven days after the storm) and Charter cable, Internet, and telephone working immediately. Others reported several days’ gap between restoration of power and restoration of cable services. According to Charter spokesperson Tom Cohan, by Tuesday, Dec. 23, only 103 Harvard subscribers were still without service. He said that they hoped to have all services restored before Christmas.
Nearly everyone interviewed said they used their cell phones for communication while telephone service was down. Some questioned why cellular systems remained operational with widespread power outages and other communication systems out of service. Cellular networks are less vulnerable because they have fewer components to keep running—a tower every several miles, which is typically out of the way of heavy stands of trees, with some kind of backup generator that kicks in if utility power fails. The operating components are way up in the air, not likely to have anything fall on them. They don’t depend on wires to carry signals; those are all sent to and received by other towers via line-of-sight microwave dishes. Of course, if power outage is sustained, and they run out of whatever fuel they are burning, the cell goes down, but most ground locations are within the range of multiple towers, so even the loss of a few towers doesn’t put the network completely out of service.
There were some innovative workarounds to the Internet outages. A few people with cell phones that have Internet access found that the network connection that allows Internet browsing on their cell phone could also be used as a modem for connecting a computer, a method known as “tethering.” Several people participating in an online Harvard forum about Internet services say they are looking into adding this feature to their cell phone plan, in preparation for future outages.
Others that the Press interviewed said they may be rethinking their telephone and Internet services, with more of an eye toward reliability and recovery during future outages. Blair indicated the town would be adding Verizon DSL service at Town Hall, in order to have Wi-Fi connectivity during Charter outages.
