Our thoughts continue to be with those who are recovering from the impacts of Hurricane Helene and the first responders deployed throughout North Carolina. Helene caused unprecedented widespread damage across western North Carolina, and our network wasn’t immune to the impacts of the storm.
In the immediate aftermath of Helene, our AT&T teams worked quickly to restore wireless services in the area. We have also made significant progress with restoration of AT&T services to homes and businesses across the region. While we continue to make strong progress, much work remains to be done. To speed the restoration process, we have hundreds of technicians working seven days a week to restore services to our friends, our neighbors, and our community.
As they are rebuilding, we continue to call on the public and the contractors that are doing debris removal work to be aware of our facilities and not to damage or disrupt that equipment as it may delay critical restoration work.
Keeping Our Communities Safe
At AT&T, we have long been committed to serving the public safety community – we see it as both our obligation and our honor. This is especially important in times of crisis and natural disasters. While the AT&T Network Disaster Recovery (NDR) team worked on network restoration in areas impacted by storm damage, federal, state, and local authorities assisted our on-the-ground teams by “helping clear the way” as we deployed dedicated assets from the FirstNet®, Built with AT&T fleet to provide vital connectivity in the most heavily affected areas. Additionally, the FirstNet Response Operations Group (ROG)™ – led by a team of former first responders dedicated to working around the clock, 24x7x365, to support public safety’s emergency communications needs – had liaisons engaged with local, state and federal agencies.
With the unprecedented destruction caused by Hurricane Helene, North Carolina’s Next Generation 911 network continued to work and allowed people to make critical emergency calls. Utilizing AT&T ESInet™, North Carolina’s Next Generation 911 network allows for the secure routing of digital information—including landline calls, cell phone calls and text messages—to the appropriate public safety answering point (PSAP) based on geographic location. It also provides high-speed data network connections that allow every PSAP to serve as a backup for others on the system in the event of a natural disaster or an overload of emergency calls. This provided resiliency in the wake of Hurricane Helene, and ultimately helped save lives.
Learn more about the resiliency of North Carolina’s Next Gen 911 network: https://statescoop.com/north-carolina-next-generation-911-hurricane-helene/
FirstNet Satellite Cell on Light Truck (SatCOLT) provides emergency communications in Asheville, NC.
AT&T is Committed to Serving our North Carolina Customers.
We understand how important it is to stay connected, and we know this need is even greater before, during and after any natural disaster.
As we continue restoring and rebuilding our networks, here are a few helpful tips for customers:
- Upon restoration of commercial power, we encourage our customers to manually restart their modems.
- Customers experiencing issues with their AT&T service can reach us at att.com, on the myAT&T app, or over the phone.
- Most customers who call us also have the option to receive a call back at their convenience.
- Customers looking to reach us via phone can contact us 24/7 at 800.288.2020 for service support.
- Our retail stores are re-opened and serving customers. You can view store hours and locations att.com/stores/northcarolina.
To help our wireless customers impacted by Hurricane Helene stay connected through this difficult time, we are waiving overage charges through November 25 to provide unlimited talk, text and data for AT&T Postpaid & Prepaid customers with billing addresses in zip codes across affected areas.
We appreciate your patience as we continue working to restore service to affected areas of North Carolina as quickly and safely as conditions allow.
