Washington, D.C.-based Pepco’s response to the snow emergency that cut...
Washington, D.C.-based Pepco’s response to the snow emergency that cut off power to thousands of its subscribers in January shows the utility isn’t keeping up with technology, Maryland State Sen. Brian Frosh (D) and former FCC official Blair Levin wrote…
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in an op-ed piece in the Montgomery Gazette. Levin told us the objections tie back to the national purposes section of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. “The recent snowstorm raises the following question: What century does Pepco think its customers are living in?” they wrote. “Pepco’s emergency response system is both more expensive and less efficient than it should be, because it is based not on the technology of today, not on the technology of the last decade, but on the technology developed in the 19th century: voice communications.” Attempting to report an outage electronically is impossible, with the system unable to handle e-mail, the editorial said. Pepco also does not have an application available to make a report using a smartphone. “Decision-making becomes more efficient, more effective and more precise” when new technologies are used, they said. “The system can handle an unlimited number of reports (because it is not necessary to hire emergency operators to take the reports), and resources can be spent on responding to, instead of just collecting, information."