IT reflections on the superstorm - Spiceworks
"We had a few customer service reps work from home, letting our biggest customers know what the situation was. Before we had wanted to discourage users working from home, but now it turned out to be something we needed to do badly. The CSRs can get basic email service via our outsourced email webmail interface, but the problem is they don't have the supporting documents. They don't have access to email addresses, customer info, order info and so forth."
"Another important thing to remember in a large event like this is that communications gets really difficult. Cell phones don't work and the power is out. Internet connections fail and roads may be impassable and gas in short supply. Getting a simple message to another person becomes a real task. And one important thing that got forgotten was that both the fire and burglar alarms might not work either, since even though they use POTS lines as backups, they still go through the same poles.
To give us emergency Internet connection, we now have a simple cell phone router installed. The cost of the device is low, and, since the device supports two carriers (AT&T and T-Mobile) instead of just one carrier, a single device gives us triple the amount of possible carriers. Similar devices exist that route analog phone devices to the cellular network."
