• Be sure you have a "Hurricane Phone" -- a traditional wire line phone
  available in case your power goes out. The base of a cordless phone
  requires commercial electricity and will not work in a power outage.
   
• Check out the Community Information Pages in local editions of
  The Real Yellow Pages® from BellSouth. The section includes critical
  information for hurricane and severe weather planning, survival, and
  recovery. It also can be found online at http://www.realpageslive.com/.
   
• Designate a friend or family member outside the storm area as a central
  contact. Plan for everyone in your family to communicate with that
  person to relay status and location information.
   
• Ensure that your home and business are equipped with the proper
  telephone services to re-route communications in the event of a service
  interruption. BellSouth offers products like BellSouth® Voice Mail,
  CrisisLink(SM), Remote Access Call Forwarding, Call Forwarding Don't
  Answer and Call Forwarding Busy Line.
   
• Make sure that your wireless phones all work properly and are charged
  and have batteries and car chargers available.
   
• Program all emergency contact numbers into your Cingular Wireless®
  phone. Make sure that everyone in your family has the home, work and
  cell numbers of family members, friends and co-workers with whom they
  will want to communicate.
   
• Consider additional cell phones for your family's use or for storage in
  your safe room/basement. The Cingular® Family Talk and Prepaid plans
  offer great options for staying in touch during an emergency.
   
• Consider downloading new tools that will give you the latest weather
  forecasts and traffic updates. Cingular offers tools such as My-Cast
  Weather, available for download at http://www.cingular.com/media, to help you
  stay up-to-date over your wireless device.
   
• BellSouth posts emergency contact information on its Web site at
  http://bellsouth.mediaroom.com/. During a hurricane or other severe
  storm, BellSouth will update the site with status information about the
  BellSouth network.

• Use your phone for necessary calls only, leaving lines open for
  emergencies.
   
• During a power outage, your phone line may be inoperable if your
  cordless phone, caller ID unit or other telephone equipment requires
  external power. Plug a non-electrical telephone directly into a phone
  jack to verify if you have service.
   
• During periods of extremely high calling volume, you may experience a
  slow dial tone. If you don't hear a dial tone immediately, wait a few
  seconds or hang up and try your call again later.
   
• Consider short/text messaging service (SMS) as a communications
  alternative. Sending a text message requires less signal strength and
  can be a fast and effective alternative to voice calls during an
  emergency.

After the Storm:

• You may encounter delays in getting calls through because of high
  demand for service; be patient and keep trying.
   
• It is still a crisis situation - keep your calls short to allow
  emergency calls to get through.
   
• To request repair services in English or Spanish, please contact:
  1.877.737.2478 for residential lines
  1.866.620.6000 for business lines
  1.888.341.2355 for hearing impaired customers (TTY)
  http://www.bellsouth.com/repair on the Web