Verizon Tests NYSE Data Links

Despite substantial equipment damage and ongoing phone disruptions, Verizon Communications said Friday that it expects to have enough data and phone lines restored to support the New York Stock Exchange when it reopens for trading Monday.

The local phone company for the New York area has been conducting tests since Thursday afternoon that check whether the high-capacity data links between the NYSE and the phone switch, which carries 80% of the exchange’s traffic, work.

Another dry run, set for today, will send data over lines that connect brokerage houses to the exchange.

“We’re going to work like crazy to get done what we need to get done,” said Larry Babbio, Verizon’s vice chairman. “I’m not naive enough to believe this is going to be a perfect situation, but the fact is it’s going to be [really] good.”

U.S. stock markets hope to reopen for trading Monday, ending what has been the longest hiatus since before World War II. The NYSE, although not next to the World Trade Center, is only blocks away, and the rubble and debris from the destruction fell around the NYSE and throughout lower Manhattan.

In addition to repairing the critical communications and data links, the exchange has had to cope with the problem of how tens of thousands of Wall Street workers will get to their jobs in an area where public transportation and other support services have been badly disrupted. There also were fears that reopening the NYSE and the Nasdaq Stock Market, by increasing traffic into the area, could hamper rescue efforts at the World Trade Center site.

But barring problems during Saturday’s test run--and a second planned by Nasdaq for Sunday--the markets will open Monday for a normal 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST trading day, Chairman Richard A. Grasso said.

The stock exchange opening is “a way of saying to those who have inflicted this heinous crime upon us, ‘You have not succeeded,’ ” Grasso said. He added that security at the exchange will be tightened and said traders should arrive as much as 90 minutes early.

Meanwhile, continuing rescue efforts occasionally interrupt efforts by phone company employees to clean up and reactivate equipment.

Verizon said the switching center that carries 80% of the NYSE’s traffic is working and has plenty of fuel. A second location, which usually handles 20% of the exchange’s data, is in a building that is flooded and pierced by huge steel beams from buildings that once stood close by.

Phone service throughout lower Manhattan will continue to be spotty, at best, with nearly 160,000 lines still out because of disabled equipment. The effect of that is unclear because “we’re not sure how many customers will come back and want service in that region,” Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe said.

Standard long-distance and local phone networks continue to be overwhelmed with the volume of traffic, though phone companies are adding capacity and the volume is starting to subside.

Congestion on wireless networks is expected to ease slightly because of the addition of temporary cell sites in the affected area.

In addition, the phone company is likely to discover that many underground lines--through the Financial Center and elsewhere--have been severed or shattered by the mini-earthquakes caused by buildings toppling.

Verizon, AT&T; Corp. and others are rushing to make high-capacity connections to new quarters set up by financial services that lost their offices in the disaster.

“Wherever they have moved, we’ll reroute the traffic,” said Dave Johnson, a spokesman for AT&T;’s network services unit. “The region still just looks like a war zone.” If there are shattered fiber lines, “it’s going to be a long time before we can even get to that cable, because it’s buried in just tons and tons of rubble,” he said.

Verizon Wireless, which lost the use of 10 cell sites in the disaster, has brought in 10 portable cell sites and positioned them around lower Manhattan and across the Hudson River to compensate for the lost service. Other wireless companies have made similar arrangements to make sure emergency crews can continue to communicate by whatever means necessary.

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Douglass reported from Los Angeles and Mulligan from New York.