Most Wireless Sites in Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands Remain Down
Puerto Rico's main public safety answering point remains offline, with 911 calls being sent to the backup PSAP. The St. Croix and St. Thomas 911 call centers are operational but unable to retrieve some location information for wireless and VoIP…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
callers, the FCC said Thursday in its latest Hurricane Maria status report. It said 84.6 percent of wireless sites are out of service, down from 86.3 percent the day before. It said 24 of Puerto Rico's 78 counties have all their cellsites out of service, down from 27. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, 60.3 percent of cellsites are out of service, down from 66 percent, and all cellsites in St. John remain out of service. It also said large numbers of people in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands remain without cable or wireline service due to widespread power outages. And it said two Puerto Rican TV stations and nine radio stations are reported off-air. The outage information is "almost certainly ... not complete" due to some communications providers having yet to report, the agency said. A Wireless Bureau order Thursday granted an American Radio Relay League temporary waiver to allow amateur data transmission at a higher baud rate than allowed to facilitate hurricane relief communications. “Approximately one-third” of Puerto Rico’s VHF radio system for communication among municipalities is back online, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency Thursday. “Since Hurricane Maria, communication has been out across the island, hampering the ability of mayors to communicate.” The system currently allows communication among more than 30 municipalities, and is expected to be fully functional by “early next week,” FEMA said. The system will also allow municipalities to communicate with the Puerto Rico Emergency Management Agency, the federal counterpart said. “Restoration is joined by more and more cell towers being re-energized around the periphery of the island, increasing communications of government municipalities and Puerto Ricans.” AT&T and other carriers likely learned lots of lessons from the three big storms that hit parts of the U.S. recently, blogged public safety consultant Andrew Seybold Thursday. “The final and greatest challenge is just getting underway in Puerto Rico,” Seybold wrote. “Because of the devastation, lack of access, power, water, and food, the job for both those handling the power and the cell sites is most daunting.” As it rebuilds its cellsites, FirstNet partner AT&T is likely spending extra time and money making sure more sites are hardened to a point where they can withstand at least some of “nature’s fury,” he said. “I say ‘some’ because I am not certain how you could ensure your hardened sites are, in fact, hardened to withstand what Maria brought.”