HURRICANE MICHAEL —

FCC says carriers failed Florida after hurricane—but lets them off the hook

FCC finds "voluntary" commitment didn't work, proposes new... voluntary commitment.

JON BRODKIN - 5/10/2019, 1:02 PM

The Federal Communications Commission isn't punishing carriers for their horrible response to Hurricane Michael in Florida, despite a commission investigation finding that the carriers' mistakes prolonged outages caused by the hurricane.

Mobile carriers' response to the hurricane was so bad that even FCC Chairman Ajit Pai—who normally avoids any criticism of the industry he's paid to regulate—called it "completely unacceptable" in October 2018. Outages left many customers without cell service for more than a week, as Verizon and others struggled to restore service.

Pai initiated an investigation and released the FCC Public Safety Bureau's resulting report yesterday. The report recommends changes that carriers can make to improve future hurricane responses, and Pai said he is "call[ing] on wireless phone companies, other communications providers, and power companies to quickly implement the recommendations contained in this report."

But following the report's recommendations is optional for the carriers because the FCC didn't announce any plans to require them to implement the changes. The FCC investigation found that carriers failed to follow their own previous voluntary roaming commitments, unnecessarily prolonging outages, yet the FCC is still relying entirely on voluntary measures to prevent recurrences.

The FCC declined comment when contacted by Ars about the lack of punishment and new requirements. "We don't comment on, confirm, or speculate about enforcement matters," a spokesperson for Pai told Ars.

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