Cellphone towers take a beating
Communications providers offer discounts, freebies after loss of power
Oh, those magical handheld phonecalling, text-making, music-listening, picture-taking, game-playing, newsreading, answer-giving devices.
They do so much for us and we’ve grown to rely on them always being there, waiting to serve as long as we keep them charged and don’t drop them.
As Hurricane Irma approached Florida last weekend, we kept our smart phones plugged into their chargers, knowing they’d be full of juice if we lost power.
But as hurricane-force winds howled outside, many of us discovered the magic was gone.
Suddenly, customers experienced web pages loading slowly, video not working, and attempts to make calls greeted with recordings saying all circuits are busy.
As electricity stopped flowing, cell towers started dropping off of the network, slowing communications across the state.
By Monday, nearly half — 1,493 — of the 3,085 cell towers in the tricounty region were inoperable, according to status reports released by the Federal Communications Commission, including 443 of 924 towers in Broward County, 311 of 726 towers in Palm Beach County and 739 of 1,435 towers in Miami-Dade County.
Hardest-hit counties lost larger percentages, including Monroe (81 percent), Lee (54 percent), Hendry (67 percent) and Highlands (53 percent).
Statewide, 3,973 of 14,502 cell towers — 27 percent — were down at the exact time consumers were relying on