[kumasi]

Hurricane Isaac just blew through my Hometown of New Orleans. We had a tremendous amount of rain and wind gusts over 100 mph. My historic neighborhood "The Marigny" was built beginning in early 1800's and its homes have withstood every hurricane since that time. Flooding is not an issue due to our location on the "High" ground above sea level. We did lose power and cable/wifi service. I have an old school 8530 bridged to a PlayBook on Virgin Mobile, which uses the Sprint network. I kept 2-4 bars of service throughout the storm. It seems like all of my neighbors are on ATT and had intermittent cell service at best. Making the rounds after the deluge to check on my neighbors I whipped out my PlayBook and Curve and offered up internet and cell service. Everyone was so impressed and happy to be able to connect via Twitter, Facebook, email and good old fashioned phone calls. BlackBerry saves the day!

[PedroBorgas]

Dude, u saved the day.

I'm sure that hundreds of relatives were reasured of their kin status! All thanks to phone calls and facebook updates

I'm glad that, even in the dark there's always light. In this case was you and your bridge connection ^^

Gratz

Sent from a old but beautiful BB 8520 or a new and shinny PB 2.0

[jeroen_13]

Blackberry = Unstoppable !! #TeamBlackberry

[amrovi2014]

Kumasi

Because of the greatness of RIM products you were so cool to provide the connection to the outside world. And you demonstrated the products so well that others may buy RIM phones and playbooks Good job!!!!

And I am typing this on my PlayBook.

[robsteve]

I was able to use my PlayBook to follow Isaac using the WeatherUnderground site and all the features of the site and blog worked. For example, some of the graphic animations by NOAA and other sources are in Flash.

There have also been improvements made to the PlayBook browser since this time last year. Last year the WunderMap, an interactive map, did not work well on the PlayBook Browser. This year it seems to work.

I am in Atlantic Canada and Isaac didn't affect us, but there is a slim possibility Leslie could make it this way.

http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/

WunderMap� | Interactive Weather Map and Radar | Weather Underground

[beman39]

Wow this would make a great commercial...sorta like those duracell commercials LOL

[canuckvoip]

Stay safe, and good job OP!

[skyrocket9]

Nice blackberry devices have amazing connectivity!!

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900 using Tapatalk

[BaconMunch]

Hmm..this leads to an interesting question though. Would a PlayBook 4G have worked and maintained connection? As I understanding the PlayBook 4G and the new BB10 devices are not using BIS the same way the current BB OS 4-7+ devices are. Are we going to lose this emergency network reliability with BB10?

[howarmat]

Hmm..this leads to an interesting question though. Would a PlayBook 4G have worked and maintained connection? As I understanding the PlayBook 4G and the new BB10 devices are not using BIS the same way the current BB OS 4-7+ devices are. Are we going to lose this emergency network reliability with BB10?

Depends, to me it seems the virgin/sprint network helped the OP more so than his BB did. He mentioned all his neighbors were on ATT and didnt have good service. So if you had a LTE playbook on ATT then you might be just as SOL as his neighbors. You will always still need to have your network working. BB have at times seemed to get better connectivity over other devices and hopefully this will hold true with BB10 and such. Have to see though.

[BlazorBoy]

I agree. This is a Sprint testimonial but the bridge helped in using the service.

[Branta]

Depends, to me it seems the virgin/sprint network helped the OP more so than his BB did. He mentioned all his neighbors were on ATT and didnt have good service. So if you had a LTE playbook on ATT then you might be just as SOL as his neighbors. You will always still need to have your network working. BB have at times seemed to get better connectivity over other devices and hopefully this will hold true with BB10 and such. Have to see though.

Yes, there's an element of random chance in any natural event to decide which cell towers get knocked out and which remain in service. In this case the local Sprint tower seems to have been one of the lucky ones.