NEW YORK—Verizon said its wireless network experienced congestion due to heavy calling in the aftermath of yesterday’s terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. During the peak of the day, Verizon said it experienced 50- to 100-percent increases in traffic nationwide on its wireless network.
Verizon said as many as 10 of its wireless cell cites in New York City were not operating last night, mostly because facilities that connect the sites to the landline network went through the World Trade Center.
The company said three temporary cell sites are on standby to go into southern Manhattan as soon as emergency officials allow. The company is increasing power and redirecting capacity at several northern New Jersey cell sites to serve southern Manhattan. By 10 p.m. last night a new cell site was scheduled to be on the air in Liberty State Park in New Jersey, and two additional new cell sites were to be on the air by midnight to bolster New York City coverage.
The company also said temporary cell sites have been established at the site of a fourth crash in Pittsburgh and a temporary site will soon be operational at the Pentagon.
Following the attack, calls to Verizon’s networks reached twice the normal daily volumes of 115 million calls in New York City and 35 millions calls in the nation’s capital, said the company. On a normal business day Verizon handles 1.5
billion calls, it said.
The company said two facilities at the World Trade Center that handled calls to and from the complex were destroyed in the building collapse.
Normally, Verizon has 488 employees, including some sales people, who work in the World Trade Center. They worked on lower floors of the North Tower. The company said it has accounted for most of these employees.
At 140 West Street in Manhattan, the company’s operations center was evacuated before the WTC buildings collapsed. Normally, 1,737 employees are assigned to that building, said Verizon.
