Cingular Wireless Prepare for Hurricane Jeanne in South Florida

[jones]

Cingular Wireless Offers Consumer Tips to Help Prepare for Hurricane Jeanne in South Florida
Friday September 24, 11:04 am ET
Company readies generators, network personnel and sets up emergency staging areas


BOCA RATON, Fla., Sept. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Hurricane Jeanne, a category 2 system with winds up to 100 mph, is gaining speed and is threatening to hit the east coast of Florida over the weekend. A report from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) at 8am EDT on Friday, September 24 stated that Jeanne is moving toward the west at nearly 8 mph and this motion is expected to continue with some increase in forward speed during the next 24 hours. A hurricane watch is in effect for the east coast of Florida, from Florida City to St. Augustine, including Lake Okeechobee. The system's hurricane force winds are extending up 45 miles from the center and tropical force winds extend up to 140 miles. With more than 150,000 calls placed every day to emergency personnel from wireless phones, Cingular wants consumers to know how to prepare.
"Taking the time to plan now can make a considerable difference in how much a hurricane affects your family or business," says Rich Guidotti, vice president/general manager, Cingular Wireless-South Florida. "Any emergency plan should include a wireless communications component, too, so that every member of the family knows who to contact if they get separated."

The company also plans to set up emergency calling stations in the hardest hit areas so individuals without power or phone service are able to make phone calls at no charge to loved ones anywhere in the United States.

What can you do to prepare yourself for an emergency?

* Learn your text messaging feature on your phone. This is an easy way to
send a quick message to a loved one's cell phone if you can't call
them.

* Program in all of your emergency contact numbers. Program in 9-1-1,
the police department, fire station and hospital contact numbers, as
well as your family members into your cell phone.

* Have a family communications plan in place. Designate someone out of
the area as a central contact, and make certain all family members know
who to contact if they become separated.

* Monitor weather alerts and bulletins. Wireless Internet access can
help you keep abreast of important weather alerts during power outages
or when access to a TV or radio is unavailable.

* Keep your wireless phone dry and phone batteries charged at all times.

* Forward your home number to your wireless number in the event of an
evacuation. That way you will get incoming calls from your landline
phone.

* Consider additional cell phones or prepaid phones for your family's
emergency use.

Cingular's Hurricane Jeanne Preparations

* Refueling back up generators and testing all fixed and portable
generators to ensure they are functioning properly.

* Deploying teams of engineers and technicians to targeted areas of the
state to monitor back up power at cell sites.

* Executing rapid response network staging areas in Lakeland, Lake Mary
and Margate where additional emergency equipment and personnel can be
quickly deployed to the impacted areas of the state.

* Staging over 500 additional generators from nearby states to be
deployed from Florida staging areas as needed.

* Placing additional network technicians from other states, crews of
electricians and other specialized personnel on stand by.

* Florida call centers are automatically linked with centers in other
states and calls can be re-routed so customers can contact us when they
need to.

* Retail locations will be open as long as possible to provide assistance
to customers while considering mandatory evacuation orders and
employees' personal safety.

* Cingular retail locations throughout the state continue to accept
donations for the American Red Cross through the month of September to
support hurricane relief.

* To ensure that emergency responders have access to wireless
communications, Cingular has provided over 1,500 phones to emergency
agencies throughout the state.

Cingular Wireless is Prepared for Severe Weather

* Cingular's Regional Network Operations Center (RNOC) monitors and
maintains its wireless network 24 hours a day, seven days a week so
they can quickly assess and respond to an emergency situation within
minutes.

* Towers and switching centers are designed and built to withstand
hurricane-force winds.

* As electrical outages are common during storms, Cingular's switching
centers have back-up emergency generators. All cell sites have high-
capacity battery back-up and some have emergency generators, ensuring a
secure source for power. A fleet of portable generators are also
available to provide additional power source, if needed.

* Cingular has a fleet of portable, self-contained mobile cell sites
(known as "COWS" or "COLTS"), that can be towed or driven into an area
to provide extra call capacity or to restore communications following a
disaster.


About Cingular Wireless

Cingular Wireless, a joint venture between SBC Communications (NYSE: SBC - News) and BellSouth (NYSE: BLS - News), serves more than 25 million voice and data customers across the United States. A leader in mobile voice and data communications, Cingular is the only U.S. wireless carrier to offer Rollover(SM), the wireless plan that lets customers keep their unused monthly minutes. Cingular is the largest provider of GSM services in the United States, and has a 100 percent digital GSM/GPRS footprint across its service area. It also launched the world's first commercial deployment of wireless services using Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) technology. Cingular also provides corporate e-mail and other advanced data services through its GPRS, EDGE and Mobitex packet data networks. Details of the company are available at http://www.cingular.com .




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Cingular Wireless