FCC: “Serious outages” of communication services still remain in some hurricane-hit areas

FCC: “Serious outages” of communication services still remain in some hurricane-hit areasWith Hurricane Sandy causing power system failures in the Northeast part of the US, the officials at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revealed in a Wednesday statement that a number of "serious outages" of wireless and wired communications services are still being reported in New York, New Jersey, and some other severely-hit areas.

Although some wireless and wired communications services have been restored, FCC's Public Safety Chief David Turetsky revealed that while 25 percent of the cell sites on towers and buildings in 158 counties in 10 states were `out of service' on Tuesday morning, the knocked-out services had come down only "by a few percentage points" - to 22 percent - as of 10 a. m. ET on Wednesday.

Highlighting the fact that the progress made in restoring services was slow, Turetsky further disclosed that in "well under 20 percent" of homes in the storm-hit areas, wired broadband and cable television systems continued to be out of service on Wednesday.

Further adding that emergency call centers were receiving `911' calls, Turetsky said that quite a few cell sites were currently running on backup power; with the carriers having installed portable generators for improving service in some areas.

Reiterating that users of wireless and wired communications services continued to remain affected by widespread power outages, wind damage and flooded equipment, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said on Wednesday: "The crisis is not over. Over all, the condition of our communications networks is improving, but serious outages remain."