Mt. Washington communication equipment. Signals from the mountain's antennas reach an area covering much of northern New England. They carry not just TV and radio programming but countless telephone signals-ordinary phone calls as well as FAA air traffic control data, plus police, fire and emergency services. Because these signals affect millions of peoples' lives and property 24 hours a day, the communications center simply cannot afford any downtime. Until 1993, all of the center's communications traffic, along with the millions of dollars in electronic equipment that makes it possible, were extremely vulnerable to such natural phenomena as snow- and wind-induced static discharges.