Post-Beryl cellular network, power outages linger

Roughly 30% of sites are impacted in six south Texas counties; carriers focus on refueling generators at hundreds of sites

As mobile network operators work to restore service in the wake of Hurricane Beryl’s strike upon southeastern Texas, the Federal Communications Commission says that roughly 30% of sites in the area were still out as of Tuesday, and hundreds are running on backup power and generators.

According to the FCC’s data, which is based on reports from network providers, of the more than 4,600 cell sites in the six-county disaster area, 1,335 sites were still not functioning as of Tuesday morning. Only eight of those sites were reported as down due to physical damage, and 55 were out due to transport problems. The vast majority—more than 1,100 sites—were reported as out due to lack of commercial power. Another 490 sites were impacted but functioning on backup power.

According to CenterPoint Energy, one of the major power providers in the Houston and Galveston areas, more than 2.2 million customers lost power as a result of Beryl, which struck the Texas coast as a Category 1 storm. As of Tuesday afternoon, the utility said that it had restored power to around 640,000 customers and expected to have power back to about 1 million customers by the end of Wednesday. Meanwhile, Entergy Texas said that its crews were working to get the power back on for 241,000 impacted customers and that it expected to reach the halfway mark by the end of day on Wednesday.

Verizon said that 100% of its macro sites in the impacted areas have backup battery power and the “majority” of its cell sites in those areas have backup generators, and that it is relying on those power sources and refueling efforts, until commercial power is restored. “Our engineers are confident we have the necessary fuel and crews to keep [our] operation running 24×7 until that happens,” the carrier said in a Tuesday update. According to the carrier’s Tuesday disaster response report to the FCC, it was already providing between 80-93% of its historical capacity across the six affected counties.

All three of the major carriers are temporarily waiving usage fees for customers in impacted areas, and had all staged portable generators out of the directly impacted areas, prior to the storm making landfall, as part of their preparations (see AT&T image below).

In a midday update on Tuesday, AT&T said that its current primary focus is on deploying and refueling those generators to keep sites running during the ongoing power outages.

AT&T also said that it had responded to 18 FirstNet requests for emergency support made by public safety agencies, and that its Network Disaster Recovery and Drone Operations teams had deployed a Flying Cell on Wings (or COW) in Matagorda County, Texas, to provide wireless service to a local hospital and nearby customers.

T-Mobile US President of Technology Ulf Ewaldsson posted on X, formerly Twitter, that T-Mobile was “experiencing some service interruptions due to commercial power outages and storm damage” in the immediate aftermath of the storm, which hit early Monday morning as a Category 1 hurricane.

As part of its recovery efforts, T-Mobile US said that it has Community Response vehicles (pictured at right) at a local cooling center and shelter to provide power, Wi-Fi, device charging and charging supplies to those who need them.

AccuWeather has estimated that the total economic loss in the U.S. from Beryl will be between $28 and $32 billion.