On the 24th of August 2007 an earthquake that measured 8.0 on the Richter scale hit the coast of Peru. The epicenter was just off the coast and located about 150 kilometers SSE of the capital city Lima. Over 150 people died. There was some damage in the capital but most was confined to the towns on the coast.
The mobile networks collapsed due to damaged network infrastructure from the quake, the loss of electrical power and the sheer volume of calls to the affected areas from concerned friends and relatives.
Even while the operators were trying to put their networks back together the Peruvian government started a public firestorm over the outages. “This should not have happened!” was the general tone. The President, Alan Garcia ordered the regulatory bodies to investigate and multi-million dollar fines were bandied about. Operator management was distracted by the public savaging and the need to respond to government officials at a time when they should have been concentrating on restoring services.
Seven months later, the regulator fined Telefonica, America Movil and Nextel a collective 2.8M Peruvian soles or just over USD300K each, an amount that maybe looked good in the newspapers but was nothing more than a face-saving slap on the wrist.
Last Saturday morning (Feb 27 2010) an earthquake measuring 8.8 hit the coast of Chile. Since the Richter scale is logarithmic, the Chilean quake was 6 times as strong, heavily damaging parts of the capital city of Santiago some 317 kilometers to the north of the epicenter. As of this morning (Mar 1, 2010), over 700 people have lost their lives.
Again the mobile networks have collapsed. Again for the same combination of reasons largely beyond the operators’ control. The most affected parts lost internet service but this was restored fairly quickly to Santiago and social networks have pumped out amateur video of the damage.
Since Sunday morning, the country’s chief regulator – Subtel’s Pablo Bello – has been answering customer complaints via Twitter, patiently explaining the reasons for the problems and passing on useful messages from other citizens. The chief problem as he reports it is the lack of electrical power to sites so he has been working to getting vital resources directed to the operators. He has not yet breathed a suggestion that the operators could have done anything in the face of a natural disaster of this magnitude.
His followers on Twitter have received constant updates on his activities to support the restoration of the network and he appealed on the Internet for more satellite telephones. Telefónica has responded. Today we got a region-by-region breakdown of the damage including estimated percentages of the number of base stations affected. Nothing keeps the public from panicking like a constant stream of information from its leadership.
On March 11th there will be a change of government in Chile and Pablo will most likely be out of a job. The new president is center-right and Pablo is closely associated with the outgoing center-left coalition.
I don’t agree with much of what Subtel decides. It is far too quick to intervene in competitive markets for my taste.
But this kind of leadership in a crisis and clear-headed understanding of the issues demonstrates a level of executive skill that is often lacking in many businesses.
Pablo Bello deserves to get a good job somewhere when all this is over. It will be a loss to the Latin American industry if it isn’t in telecom.
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