Identify the shared backhaul facility and root cause of the 15 October outage

Identify the provider, shared backhaul facility, and root cause responsible for the 15 October 2024 transport outage that affected cellular sites across six North Carolina counties.

Background

The paper finds that 47 additional sites were attributed to transport on 15 October, without rainfall, increased power outages, or reported site damage. The affected sites were geographically clustered across six contiguous counties, while three interior neighboring counties were unaffected.

This pattern supports—but does not directly prove—the existence of a shared provider-specific or route-specific backhaul failure. DIRS does not identify the filing provider or site, and IODA provides only state-level corroboration. The authors state that the corresponding confidential NORS filings could resolve the mechanism.

References

The inference to a single shared backhaul facility remains indirect: we cannot name it, because DIRS does not identify providers or sites, and IODA cannot localise below state level.

— The Towers Were Standing: A Cause Decomposition of Cellular Outages During Hurricane Helene  (2609.10944 - Olukola et al., 10 Sep 2026) in Section 5.3, subsection “Geographic signature”; Section 5.5, “What the 15 October analysis establishes”; Section 7.3, “Future work”