Flying Cell Sites Keep Communities Connected

Picture a cell tower that takes to the sky when the ground route is blocked. We sit with Chris, senior disaster recovery manager at T‑Mobile for Business, to unpack how a tethered drone becomes a flying cell site—rising to 400 feet, running 24/7, and restoring coverage where trucks can’t reach. From islands off Puerto Rico to rugged stretches near Hawaii, this portable system can ride on a boat or UTV, spin up quickly, and hold the network steady until permanent infrastructure is back online.

Chris explains how these aerial nodes slot into a broader disaster toolkit alongside SATCOLTs, vehicles, and generators, delivering continuity when storms, hurricanes, or wildfires hit. We get into the details that matter under pressure: endurance measured in weeks, nationwide staging for rapid activation, and the ability to prioritize connectivity for public safety using network slicing. That means police, firefighters, EMS, and emergency managers get dependable voice, data, and video when they need it most, while communities regain the lifeline of reliable communication.

Security and safety anchor the entire approach. With encryption, strict procedures, and controlled altitude, the team keeps operations safe over complex disaster zones. And there’s more on the horizon—bigger airframes, advanced capabilities, and innovations designed to make resilient coverage faster to deploy and easier to maintain. If you care about disaster readiness, emergency communications, and the future of portable 5G, this conversation shows how resilient networks take flight—and why that matters for every community.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Meeting Chris At The Booth
• 0:12 Tethered Drone As Flying Cell Site
• 0:35 Field Use In Hard‑To‑Reach Areas
• 1:12 Endurance And Nationwide Readiness
• 1:21 Beyond Towers: Public Safety Solutions
• 1:58 Bigger Drones And Next‑Gen Tech
• 3:08 Security, Safety, And Wrap‑Up

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

And I'm here with Chris at T Mobile for Business. Chris, how are you?

SPEAKER_01: 0:04

I'm great, sir. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Great. You have the funnest, most exciting, interesting section here at the T Mobile for Business booth. Obviously, drones. What are we looking at? What are the scenarios that you're working with right now?

SPEAKER_01: 0:14

All right. So I'm a senior disaster recovery manager with T-Mobile and I also manage our UAS program. What you see behind us is one of our tethered systems. It's basically a flying cell site. I can fly 24-7 up to an altitude of 400 feet AGL and uh has the same mission profile as our SAT Colts and trucks and other deployables that we have to deploy within the network.

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

Fantastic. So this is a movable, uh adaptable flying uh network node. What kind of scenarios uh uh anecdotes are you using this for out in the field?

SPEAKER_01: 0:46

Right. So it's a it's a more portable system than our trucks. So uh for a good example, uh if we had an island site um like on Caleb or Vieck is somewhere near Puerto Rico or around Hawaii, what have you, we can more quickly deploy these because I can put the these in a in a boat or an UTV and get it to a harder to reach area uh for an area that maybe it would take more time to get a bigger truck in. And so that just allows us to do a quicker deployment, get our network back up faster than anyone else.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12

Well, we need that given all the you know storms and incidents and hurricanes and other uh wildfires and other issues that are affecting us. Um how scalable is this? I mean, how quickly can you get this into service? And um, can you really uh manage the network for days, weeks uh with this kind of platform?

SPEAKER_01: 1:32

This can fly 24-7, like I said, and and uh the record I believe is a couple of weeks for how long we've had one of these for the um and just like any other network asset, we're there until it the network uh is restored completely, 100%. So uh that's what we do, and uh we're just gonna bring critical communications and win where it's needed the most. Um scalable. Uh we have these deployed all over the country, ready to go at a moment's notice. No kidding. And um the same with our vehicles and generators and other assets that we have to bring our network back up.

SPEAKER_00: 2:01

So important. And this is only one scenario moving beyond the network to the uh edge device for enterprises and first responders, you know, and police, firefighters, et cetera. You have other solutions, services, drones, even uh describe what we're what we're we're using there.

SPEAKER_01: 2:17

Yes. So uh, you know, as you know, we we're we do uh T priority with network slicing, and we have that uh that uh bandwidth and capability that's scalable to uh to the needs of our public safety partners, our customers that uh are are working with that. So it's uh just a great uh you know opportunity for us to bring the best network forward to to our customers who we love.

SPEAKER_00: 2:38

So I'm a bit of a drone enthusiast, so I'm looking at your you know amazing devices and drones here as toys. Of course, they're not, but you must have a lot of fun out in the field building and developing, deploying these solutions too.

SPEAKER_01: 2:50

Yes, yes, I'm on call 24-7, so yes, but we do have a lot of fun. And this is not even our biggest drone. We have some that are even bigger than this, and we have some advanced technologies that we're working on now that um that'll be coming out soon. And you guys will get to see that.

SPEAKER_00: 3:03

And of course, you're really focused on securities uh and safety and operating these safely. Um you must have things like encryption and other technologies deployed to make these as safe as possible. Yes, yes, that's true. Well, congratulations. It's an amazing uh platform you've built and onwards and upwards, literally. Yes, sir. We're rooting for you.

SPEAKER_01: 3:22

Yeah, thank you very much.