One-fourth of cell towers in county still inoperable
Sen s . Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio are asking FEMA for help restoring cellphone coverage knocked out by Hurricane Irma.
In a letter to FEMA Administrator Brock Long, the pair asked the agency to “coordinate with relevant federal, state and local officials to facilitate the ability of communications companies to access affected areas, assess damage to their networks and restore service.”
As of Wednesday, 18 per- cent of Florida’s cell towers were inoperable. In Palm Beach County, it was 24 percent, according to a Federal Communications Commission report. In Monroe County, which includes the hard-hit Keys, it was 82 percent.
The problem could have dangerous consequences. Most people could not make phone calls or send text messages after the storm. And as of Wednesday, 29 emer- gency 911 call centers around the state were either not operating or operating at reduced capacity, according to the FCC.
The problems can mostly be chalked up to the extraor- dinary number of outages ty’s 726 cell towers — 43 perthroughout the state. Many cent — were out on Monday. cell towers are running on Two of the four major cargenerators if they’re oper- riers, Sprint and Verizon, ating at all. said they welcomed the sen
A T-Mobile spokeswoman ators’ letter. told The Palm Beach Post “We appreciate the senaon Tuesday that the prob- tors’ concern and offer,” Verlem is worse than it was in izon spokeswoman Kate Jay Houston following historic said. “We have substantial flooding caused by Hurriresources dedicated in the cane Harvey since that city region and we continue to mostly didn’t lose power. work with FEMA and other
FCC reports back up the federal and state agencies claim. At its worst, 4.8 per- on the restoration effort. cent of cell towers in Harris We intend to keep the senCounty, which includes Hous- ators aware of our progress ton, were out. By compariand we will continue to work son, of Palm Beach Coun- with them as needed.”