Hurricane Michael Had 'Serious Impact' in Parts of Florida, Georgia, FCC Reports
Hurricane Michael had a "serious impact on communication services in the Florida Panhandle and parts of Georgia," the FCC reported Thursday, based on network outage data submitted by 11 a.m. Chairman Ajit Pai cited "substantial communications outages." The FCC said…
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.
one public safety answering point was reported down in Florida and 15 PSAPs in both states were "re-routed." About 19 percent of cellsites in 101 affected counties across three states were reported out of service: in Florida, seven counties had more than two-thirds of cellsites out, and four had more than one-third out; 14 Georgia counties and one Alabama county had more than one-third of cellsites out. There were 185,841 subscribers reported without cable or wireline telecom service in Florida, 63,473 in Georgia and 14,855 in Alabama. Four TV stations, 30 FMs and four AMs were reported out. Pai said his office and Public Safety Bureau staff contacted representatives of carriers and broadcasters about the situation and how to restore service as quickly as possible. "We were pleased that carriers had pre-positioned equipment and were in the process deploying cells on wheels (COWs) and cells on light trucks (COLTs) in order to get wireless service up and running in many locations," he said. USTelecom said members are coordinating with emergency responders and electric utilities to keep networks running, and summarized efforts of AT&T, CenturyLink, Frontier Communications and Verizon to help affected customers. The Wireline Bureau Wednesday reminded providers of a temporary waiver it granted from a phone number "aging" rule in storm-affected areas. It lets carriers, upon customer request, disconnect phone service to avoid billing issues during network disruptions and then reinstate the customer's number when service is reconnected.