UPDATE Within moments after word went out on television and by word of mouth that airplanes had slammed into the World Trade Center towers in New York on Tuesday morning, telephone communication ground to a standstill along the upper Eastern Seaboard and Internet traffic snarled major news Web sites. By late afternoon however, it was clear that although communication had been disrupted, uncounted lives lost, and financial markets closed, the nation's telecommunication infrastructure was essentially operational.
Right after 9 a.m. local time in New York, even before U.S. President George W. Bush confirmed the worst fears that the attacks were the apparent orchestrated effort of terrorists, it became impossible to get a phone call out of or into New York and other major East Coast cities, including Washington, D.C., and Boston.
By the time news reports told the world that the U.S. Department of Defense Pentagon building, across the Potomac River from Washington, had been hit by a third hijacked airliner less than an hour after the World Trade Center attacks, officials were urging residents to stop making phone calls over both land lines and cellular phones to keep lines free for emergency calls and for those frantically trying to contact loved ones in the affected cities.
Some carriers, Internet service providers and network vendors put security precautions into place, closely checking employee identification cards or enacting other measures that most declined to specify.
"At this point, we're primarily focused on the safety and security of our employees," said Mary Lou Ambrus, VP for external communications and infrastructure at Lucent Technologies in Murray Hill, N.J. "We're accommodating them based on their needs and their concerns."
For some IT vendors and carriers, such accommodations meant sending people home. Across the country, switchboard and voicemail messages relayed word that employees had gone home because of the tragedy. Many companies issued press release statements and declined further comment. At the headquarters of companies like WorldCom and AT&T, there was simply no getting through.
No wonder. At Cingular Wireless, a national mobile operator, network call traffic surged to 400 percent of its normal level from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., an Atlanta-based spokesman said.
By late afternoon, major carriers, including WorldCom, were reporting that operations were running more smoothly, albeit under emergency procedures.
Verizon, a local fixed-line and cellular carrier that serves both Washington and New York, among other cities, said calls to the area doubled from their normal peak volumes of 115 million in New York and 35 million in Washington in the wake of the incidents. Traffic on the cellular network was running between 50 percent and 100 percent above normal levels, and its directory assistance and operator services were also overwhelmed, the company said in a statement.
Adding to the problems for cell phone users was the fact that as many as 10 base station sites are not working at present, mainly because they used connections to land lines that went through the World Trade Center, Verizon said. The carrier is redirecting cell sites in New Jersey to serve lower Manhattan and planned to have a temporary cell site in Liberty State Park in New Jersey on line by 10 p.m. EDT Tuesday, it said. Other temporary cell sites are on standby to be deployed to the area.
Verizon added that most of its 488 employees who work on the lower floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex had been accounted for by late Tuesday.
Carrier response to the emergency extended beyond U.S. shores. France Telecom put in place a system to regulate the flow of calls to and from the U.S., in response to a
