Phil,

I think the one thing we could upgrade would be the power restoral at cell towers.  I wonder what it would cost to have some form of generator backup at major cell towers.  I know the tower supports multiple carriers in many cases and it might make the power issue less of a problem.

The reality is that we can all come up with scenarios that are bad for different types of infrastructure.

1 - Frost upheaval is bad for underground but so are earthquakes and water table changes.

2 - Aerial plant and cell towers have problems with high winds and ice.

So, NOTHING you can do is perfect.  OldPOTS likes to have multiple forms of access but the reality it is only going to be fiber and wireless in the long term (even HFC will become all fiber over the long term).  I think a much bigger point could be made of this.

Why are cable and telcos under separate rules at all nowadays?

seven

I think in cases like Sandy the landlines are no more reliable than the wireless ones. They all require battery backup and the more widespread the outage to more likely the service won't work (for long).

I think most folks are willing to accept not having that safety net provided by landlines and perhaps it is time to move on. But before we do, we should make sure that every square inch of the area reached by landline is reached by some equivalent technology. 

I thought it was pretty interesting that a representative asked about lessons from Sandy from the cellside perspective later on. We've reported before that a quarter of the cellsites in the region went down and the battery backup failed before the power came back on.

FCC chairman Genachowski acknowledged the need to look at "best practices" and said that the industry needs to look at how the power grid works some more. No real mention of landline dialtone staying up though, which I know for a fact it did for many people when their cable and wireless fell over.