Posted: 11/2001

Special Report

Restoring America’s
Connections

A Tribute to Fallen Friends

General Telecom (GT) will never be the same.

GT, with headquarters on the 83rd floor of One World Trade Center, lost 13 employees after a plane commandeered by terrorists crashed into the tower on Sept. 11, collapsing the 110-story building.

That more lives were not lost could be seen as a miracle in its own right. Thirty-seven people worked at GT’s headquarters but by a series of coincidences many of them were not in the tower that day. Like many others, GT employees literally were on their way into the building or in some cases, inside the tower, when disaster struck.

The company’s financial loss will run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but its greatest challenge is continuing business –and day-to-day life — in the absence of 13 colleagues and friends.

GT may have a long road ahead, but company employees and their business associates are uniting to survive emotional wounds.

GT provided counseling to the families of the victims and hosted a picnic for the families at Central Park on the Sunday following the tragedy. The General Telecom Family Fund has been created to assist the victims. The fund was bolstered by donations from General Telecom’s suppliers and American Tower Corp. which owns GT’s parent company, Verestar.

Customers are sending GT call records to help the company rebuild its database.

“Every customer and business associate is just reaching out to do everything they can to help us rebuild,” says GT president Brian Metherell, who was in Los Angeles on business when the planes struck the twin towers.

GT, an international gateway switch provider for international and long distance carriers, did not lose switching capabilities as a result of the attacks. However, the company lost the server used to process call records and access OSS functions. And despite being able to store its call records on a backup system, GT could not disseminate the call records for more than a week because it was relying on Verizon Communications Inc. for T1s and Internet access.

Its headquarters is gone, but the company will stay in Manhattan. It opened an office at 150 West 22nd St. and, Oct. 11, the company planned to invite customers to the building, during which time it would conduct a moment of silence and remembrance for lost colleagues.

“We aggressively chose to stay open, stay in New York, stay in business and rebuild,” says Metherell.

GT is not alone.

Besides the economic ramifications of the attacks, countless people in the telecommunications industry saw the twin towers at the World Trade Center collapse — and witnessed the ensuing pandemonium. Many knew people who were in the towers. They, too, are trying to rebuild their businesses and lives.

One of them, Hunter Newby, executive vice president at New York-based collocation provider Telx, was standing in front of Battery Park Plaza when one tower collapsed.

He described the chaos on Battery Street as a horde of people ran towards Staten Island Ferry. Newby remembers someone yelling that there was a bomb, and suddenly people were running in opposite directions, flying into one another.

“I was running for my life,” says Newby, “It was actually the first time in my whole life I actually felt I could die.

“I am telling you it was panic. Total panic.”

And sorrow.

A network engineer and former marine working for a competitive local exchange carrier walked into his office a few blocks from Ground Zero. With tears in his eyes, he told a colleague the towers were exploding and people were jumping out the windows. Meanwhile, says the man’s colleague, the company’s 14th floor office windows turned pitch black as debris swept through lower Manhattan — much like the ash that blanketed the forests around Mt. St. Helens in 1980.

For those of us who — by twist of fate — were not there, these experiences are unimaginable. We give our money, our time and our prayers as if that could somehow make it go away. For the survivors these gestures may provide some solace, but for the victims all we can do is protect their memory and protect the freedoms for which they died. 

Special
Report Links

Allegiance Telecom Inc. www.algx.com
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research www.aei.org
American Tower Corp. www.americantower.com
Competitive Enterprise Institute www.cei.org
AT&T Corp. www.att.com
Band-X Ltd. www.band-x.com
Beacon Group www.thebeacongroup.com
Broadwing Communications Inc. www.broadwing.com
Cogent Communications Inc. www.cogentco.com
Compaq Computer Corp. www.compaq.com
CTC Communications Corp. www.ctcnet.com
Data Storage Corp. www.stortek.com
Dynegy Inc. www.dynegy.com
Essengent www.essengent.com
Everest Broadband Networks www.everestbroadband.com
Exodus Communications www.exodus.com
Federal Communications Commission www.fcc.gov
Focal Communications Corp. www.focal.com
Fortune Consulting International Inc. www.fciusa.com
General Telecom www.generaltele.com
Gentner Communications Corporation www.gentner.com.
IDC www.idc.com
ITXC Corp. www.itxc.com
Metropolitan Telecommunications Inc. www.mettel.net
National Business Travel Association www.nbta.org
NEON Communications Inc. www.neoninc.com
Probe Research www.proberesearch.com
Qwest Communications International Inc. www.qwest.com
Raindance Communications Inc. www.raindance.com
Sonexis Inc. www.sonexis.com
Storability Inc. www.storability.com
Storage Networking World Online www.snwonline.com
Telseon www.telseon.com
Telx Communications Corp. www.telx.com
V-SPAN www.v-span.com
Verestar Inc. www.verestar.com
Verizon Communications Inc. www.verizon.com
Wainhouse Research www.wainhouse.com
Webex Communications www.webex.com
WireOne www.wireone.com
XO Communications Inc. www.xo.com
The Yankee Group www.yankeegroup.com
Yipes Communications Inc. www.yipes.com