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Liberty Puerto Rico unveils business continuity, disaster recovery plan for ’21 hurricane season

Liberty Puerto Rico announced that its business continuity and disaster recovery plan is ready to face the upcoming 2021 hurricane season, as it has been “updated, tested, and exercised regularly” in collaboration with its parent company, Liberty Latin America.

“We’re in a stronger shape to face natural disasters as we have gained experience after recent emergencies such as the earthquakes and the pandemic,” said Liberty Puerto Rico CEO Naji Khoury, president.

“Our plan was successfully put to the test in a drill with state and federal agencies recently in an effort to exercise and collaborate in the emergency management processes,” he said.

As part of that plan, Liberty has made pre-established agreements with suppliers and contractors to get quicker access to materials and labor if they are needed. In addition, the company has established emergency committees that cover all aspects of its business to ensure operational continuity.

The plan has been revised in terms of hurricane preparedness in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic, Khoury said.

“Liberty has identified different field, retail and administrative workspace alternatives to provide employees and customers with safe environments observing social distancing and other prevention measures,” he said.

The executive added that the company has also reviewed the plans taking into account the integration of the mobile infrastructure and organization that it acquired last October.

“We have adopted preparedness measures and procedures from the mobile organization and integrated the knowledgeable and experienced personnel that came with the transition,” Khoury explained.

“We continue to upgrade our fixed and mobile networks to ensure more resiliency. We have practically duplicated our ring’s infrastructure for added redundancy and continue burying our fiber in strategic locations to protect our network. By leveraging both networks, we now have an even more robust infrastructure to mitigate natural disasters and other emergencies.”

With regards to preparedness in case of possible power outages, Khoury mentioned that the plan includes an emergencies program to monitor any situation and have more technicians out on the field to mitigate service loss due to outages caused by loss of power or structural issues.

The company will also have power generators on standby for the nodes just in case they are impacted by power outages. Liberty has also redoubled a project to add more emergency battery back-ups to all major nodes across the island and activated its emergency protocol to send generators to areas with long periods of power loss.

To avoid damages from voltage fluctuations, the company recommends customers to disconnect all electronic devices at home. Sometimes, modems might need to reset after a power outage, so customers should also disconnect the modem for 20 seconds and wait two minutes after turning it on so the modem can restart and bring back service.

Khoury said that being part of a company like Liberty Latin America, which serves many markets in hurricane-prone areas, gives Liberty a great advantage because it provides the company with access to experienced personnel, best practices and inventory from other markets to ensure rapid service recovery.

“We reaffirm our commitment to provide rapid response to aid our employees, our customers and our communities, as we have done in every emergency situation in the past,” Khoury said.

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This story was written by our staff based on a press release.
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