Jacksonville, FL (December 13, 2018) – Councilman Danny Becton visited T-Mobile’s, Jacksonville Emergency Operations Center, where a team of T-Mobile engineers and techs were all hands-on-deck for several months responding to Hurricane Michael and restoring communications throughout the Panhandle.
The facility is located in District 11 off A.C. Skinner Parkway where the WJXX, now known as First Coast News, station used to be.
“Jacksonville’s EOC serves as the primary recovery center for all of North Florida,” the network’s South Region Senior Siting Advocacy Manager, Brandon Reed. “T-Mobile has assembled RF Engineers and crews from across the United States in your backyard.”
The EOC was activated at the beginning of October and didn’t shut down until the second week of December. The EOC was no longer active during Councilman Becton’s tour, but was one of the first stops the Director of Network Operations & Engineering, David Seale, took Councilman Becton upon arrival. A white board covered an entire wall, giving engineers plenty of room to write incoming information and plans for recovery.
According to T-Mobiles press release, the network provider prepared to take for the storm by installing “more permanent generators in Florida and additional infrastructure to help minimize network interruptions and putting together engineering and rapid response teams to quickly activate emergency equipment such as portable generators, fuel trucks, Cell On-Wheels, Cells on Light Trucks, fuel and diesel trucks.”
The facility is regularly used as T-Mobiles Marketing Center for the South Region. The coverage area reaches half of the east coast of Florida and across to the gulf coast, the panhandle and halfway into Georgia. The building is equipped with extremely high-tech equipment that provides customers and businesses full, quick, clear service. Seale continued the tour to the switching room half full of powerful, computers, modems and batteries whereby every call throughout their coverage area goes through this facility.
Seale showed Councilman Becton the new equipment verses the older technology they once used. The new equipment is smaller, but is capable of covering far more customers than the old. Councilman Becton noted how interesting it is to see these changes as technology continues to grow and the size of the equipment gets smaller.
“As an IT professional myself, this facility was quite impressive”, CM Becton stated. “To see the behind the scenes technology working making cell calls happen, it’s definitely interesting and to know that T-Mobile has this facility in Jacksonville is exciting”.
During the tour, Seale and Councilman Becton also talked about the cell towers in Jacksonville and where service can improve, as well as, the future of 5G, and where they see technology being in five years.
To learn more about T-Mobiles, it’s coverage, and its response and recovery efforts for Hurricane Michael, Visit: