Our Regional Economic Development Agency (REDA) has completed a review of the telecommunications failures that occurred during Cyclone Gabrielle. Was anyone in Hawke’s Bay not affected?!

The review opens with these observations: “Both the frequency and the intensity of extreme weather events is on the rise, and our infrastructure must be prepared for it. In this context, it is important that the region continues to work with operators, lines companies and Councils to effect changes that will improve the resilience of critical infrastructure particularly in the telecommunications sector.”

And after its analysis, concludes with this warning: “Without significant improvements in resilience another similar multi-day communications outage is likely to happen again in the near future. It’s imperative the region do everything it can to protect against this eventuality.”

The technical review considers underlying issues such as lack of data sharing and consistency across key telecom providers and recommends establishment of a ‘data steward’ tasked with “regular interactions with infrastructure providers to ensure the data the Regional Council holds on their networks is current and complete”.

As to the ‘event’ itself, most of us were affected by loss of mobile and internet service.

Cell towers

From a resilience standpoint, the main culprit … lack of back-up power supplies to keep cell towers in operation.

The review noted: “Power lines servicing towers are generally at far higher risk than the towers themselves. They often traverse multiple hazard areas between the nearest substation and the transformer serving the tower.” Compounding the risk, many locations contain multiple towers, all of which share the same power feeders.

And found, astonishingly:  “…aside from major transmission sites, no cellular hub sites are provisioned with permanent generators.” 

Here’s the situation:

“Feedback from carriers indicates that battery backup to cellular sites is under-provisioned in the face of natural disasters, no matter how important a site is. One provisions between 3-6 hours of run-time in battery capacity to its cellular towers, Spark 4-8 hours, and RCG 8 hours. 2degrees did not respond to questions about battery backup, but we can assume their sites have a similar specification.

“All carriers rely on the ability to deliver portable generators and staff to sites that have suffered power outages. This design is appropriate to handle the failure of individual power feeders but is not scalable to region-wide power outages. It also fails when sites are inaccessible due to impassible roads and/or poor weather.”

The report makes this key recommendation: 

“Given the principle that the first 48 hours are the most important for saving lives following a natural disaster, all sites that are the primary communications platform for any part of the region should be provisioned with 48 hours of standby power.”

Seems like a no-brainer, but the review notes it is contentious. The industry contends this would be cost -prohibitive, estimated that adding 24 hours of lithium-ion battery backup could cost up to $90,000, suggesting that 48 hours might cost around $180,000 per site.

The review counters with analysis of available Chinese and Swedish technology and estimates a cost to the region of less than $20 million.

“With around 167 towers providing 700 MHz coverage in Hawke’s Bay between the three operators and their joint-venture rural company RCG, the investment required to bring the region up to 48 hours of complete autonomy should be less than $20m. It would be a small sum for twenty-year assets providing to a region that likely contributes around $68m in annual mobile revenues to the three operators.”

It’s not clear from the report who might be empowered to require such a solution.

The review insists: “Trunk microwave towers, towers that provide emergency services, gateway sites, and locations that provide to multiple telecommunications companies should all be considered critical and should be provisioned with power that takes into account the likely restoration time for the site. In some locations this could be one or two weeks.”

The review disputes the telecom industry’s discounting of solar to power telecommunications infrastructure, giving several examples of where that could be viable in Hawke’s Bay.

In the meantime, the review recommends a ‘workshop’ to seek “agreement between the region and providers [regarding] which sites should be targeted as priorities for improvements in resilience.”

As a further prod, the review recommends that regional government entities should develop shared policy guidelines for telecommunications networks they use that specify levels of resilience operators must maintain to be considered preferred suppliers.

Fibre and microwave

More vulnerabilities. 

In addition, the review notes that “the fibre backbones serving Hawke’s Bay have little diversity or resilience. Throughout much of the region providers share the same routes, if not the same cable sheathes”. Two examples are given:

“The Napier Taupo Road, where all major fibre backbones follow the same path and are exposed to flood risk, fault zones, and high landslide risk zones. The Napier Esplanade, where all major fibre backbones are located along the same tight corridor are exposed to liquefaction risks, flood risks, and tsunami inundation risk for both near and distant sources.”

And with respect to microwave connectivity, Chorus, Kordia, and Vital maintain microwave trunk systems in the region, with the networks generally independent. However, the review warns: “Between Napier and Taupo there’s a point where all three networks converge on a single tower. While the tower is free from geologic hazards, its one aerial power feeder traverses a few kilometre long stretch of bush and is vulnerable to falling trees. This single point of convergence of communications is a significant risk to the region.”

As noted above, it is not clear who the ‘referee’ is to sort out our path to regional telecom resilience. Stay tuned.