Telecom service providers in the hurricane-ravaged areas of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi are still assessing just how badly damaged their facilities are, even as they start what all agree will be a massive and lengthy recovery process.

“We haven’t even been able to get our people in to make an assessment because the water is still rising,” a Cox spokesman said Wednesday. “This is going to be a huge recovery effort, unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”

One of the initial challenges for incumbents such as BellSouth and Cox Communications, the major cable player in New Orleans, was to locate and ensure the safety of their employees in the area.

BellSouth announced Wednesday that it is setting up “tent cities” in severely affected areas to provide its employees and their families with food, shelter and clothing. The company also said it would be loaning cash and providing other forms of assistance to employees who lost their homes in as a result of Hurricane Katrina. BellSouth has about 13,000 employees in the area. Meanwhile, in Florida, BellSouth is wrapping up its restoration efforts from the impact of Katrina where it first touched U.S. soil. About 20,000 customer lines were still out in Dade and Broward counties, or less than one percent of the total. Another 2800 lines were still out in Escambia & Santa Rosa counties.

The situation along the Gulf Coast, and particularly in New Orleans, defies previous experience.

"This is not a normal hurricane restoration situation," said Bill Smith, chief technology officer, in a prepared statement. "For example, the water level in New Orleans is still rising and working conditions are extremely difficult. As the water recedes in Mississippi and Alabama, our normal restoration efforts are progressing.”

Those efforts are gated somewhat by the lack of commercial power and BellSouth is coordinating its efforts with local power companies, as well as bringing in generators to power its own equipment, where possible, a spokesman said.

Similarly, wireless service providers say they are proceeding with restoration efforts in areas of Mississippi and Alabama as they are able to get access, while unable to make progress in New Orleans.

Verizon Wireless said it has been able to get technicians into Baton Rouge, La., Pensacola, Fla., and Mobile, Ala. to begin restoring its network. Cells on wheels, or COWs, the mobile cell sites, are being deployed in hardhit areas as those areas become accessible and Verizon Wireless stores are also reopening, and providing local residents with free calling services and battery charging of their cellphones.

Mississippi-based Cellular South said it never lost service in Biloxi or Hattiesburg, two hard-hit areas, and that efforts to restore service were well underway in Jackson County (Pascagoula, Ocean Springs) by Tuesday morning and Harrison County (Biloxi, Gulfport) by Tuesday afternoon. Service to parts of Hancock County (Bay St. Louis-area) was available by Wednesday morning.

Cellular South was also deploying COWs but was finding that, as soon as networks came on line, they were often overwhelmed by the volume of calls. By contrast, the hurricane restoration effort in Florida is almost business as usual for BellSouth.

“These are our roots and we know how to deal with this weather,” a spokeswoman said. “We have folks that have the expertise to restore service as quickly as possible. We have also learned how to make our network more resilient. We have invested capital and man-hours in establishing a network that holds up well.”

Because Hurricane Katrina hit populated areas of Florida, however, this weather episode produced more incidents of a persistent problem – customers or contractors digging up buried telephone lines as they work to clear or repair property.

“It’s always a problem,” the spokeswoman said. “But it’s going to be a bigger problem in areas where the population density is higher because there are more lines buried there.”