Cell site outages during Hurricane Helene driven mainly by power and backhaul issues
The Towers Were Standing: A Cause Decomposition of Cellular Outages During Hurricane Helene
Networking and Internet ArchitectureComputers and Society
Summary
Hurricane Helene caused thousands of cell towers to stop working, but most towers remained physically standing. The big problem was power outages and broken connections to the internet backbone, not destroyed towers. In mountainous areas, especially North Carolina and Tennessee, broken backhaul connections were the main cause of outages. The researchers analyzed government data and verified their findings with independent measurements, showing that battery backups only protect part of the network.
What this means in practice
- •For mobile network operators: Plan resilience investments by prioritizing power and backhaul infrastructure to reduce cell-site outages in mountainous disaster-prone regions.
- •For emergency response teams: Use detailed cause decomposition data to better assess communication network vulnerabilities and recovery priorities during hurricanes.
Authors
Oluseyi Olukola, Oare Danielle Addeh, Esther Abiodun Konan, Nick Rahimi
Abstract
Hurricane Helene produced the largest absolute cell-site outage in the public FCC record, peaking at 4562 sites. The conventional model is physical: towers destroyed. Helene did destroy over 1700 miles of fibre, but almost none of it was cell sites. We present the first cause-decomposed study of the FCC's Disaster Information Reporting System, reconstructing 80 state-days and 580 county-days from 24 daily filings by two reconciled independent extractions. Damage to cell sites is negligible: 1.1% of attributed cell-site-days across six states, at most 3.8% anywhere. The sites were standing. What took them out divides by terrain: pooled, power dominates at 63.2%, but in mountainous North Carolina severed transport (backhaul) reaches 52.2% against 47.3%, and in Tennessee 69.9%. North Carolina's transport share rises from 7.0% to 85.0% across the event (\r{ho} = 0.92). Seventeen days after landfall, on 15 October, 47 sites lost transport across six contiguous North Carolina counties with no rainfall, no power loss, no damage, and recovery by the next report. Independent active-probe measurement corroborates it: responsive /24s fall 1.02% for twelve hours while Tennessee stays flat. We release the dataset. Backup power is the standard resilience investment; here it addresses the smaller half of the problem.