Arnold, CA…This morning we thought we would see if we could find anything from Comcast on what their plans are to keep their network up during the PSPS PG&E outages. Especially since PG&E may have another PSPS outage on Sun & Monday. We couldn’t find any press releases or other info & so far no luck. Then it was customer service rep after customer service rep that either had no info or the question was above their pay grade. We finally got to someone who said they will wave their fees etc during outages and move charges to next bill etc. These are fine and good corporate policy. What we were looking for and didn’t get however was a plan from them to keep their network up even if local power company was down.

They said they rely on local power companies for power etc. This maybe was fine for the past but in this era of deenergized but largely undamaged infrastructure all network providers will have to be responsible for powering their networks for not just a few hours but for potentially days at a time.

Verizon, ATT etc have to have plans in place to keep cell towers powered up in power outages (Yes, we know they sometimes go down as well but they do have generators in place) For Comcast now that they are becoming a provider of phone service, along with TV & Internet they need to power their network as well. For many now they are the “Landline” provider.

What were are seeing at least from our office is that we can power customer premise equipment but if their hubs and switching equipment is down customer equipment has no network to talk to or handshake with to move packets.

Internet connectivity now is the economy. All of us it seems for the foreseeable future with our local power company holding the economy hostage will have to make plans and put systems in place so that PG&E can’t destroy our local economies while they get their systems upgraded.