Puerto Rico Urgently Needs More Help Getting Connected
A week after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, I wrote about the dismal state of communications on the island. Now we are three weeks post storm, yet the situation has barely changed as a majority of cell sites remain out of service in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. When understanding that more than 80% of Puerto Ricans are still without power, and many without potable water, food, and access to medical care, you are able to picture the burgeoning humanitarian crisis.
“This feels like we’re in a war.”
I’ve spoken with my family recently. They live in Guaynabo, arguably one of the “least” stricken areas, and not coincidentally where President Trump visited and threw paper towels into the crowd (no my family wasn’t there). When I’ve been able to reach them, I ask what daily living is like for them. I spoke with my Abuela and she said, “This feels like we’re in a war. Your Aunt hasn’t had power since Irma. We got it back for two days before Maria hit, but then it was gone again. Food is being rationed at the supermarkets, you can only buy small quantities, they let three people in at time to prevent chaos. Lines to get gas are longer than the eye can see. There are no traffic lights, so even driving is dangerous. Some of the major intersections have police officers directing traffic during the day. But we’re OK.”
The lack of communications has undoubtedly added to the logistical nightmare of getting aid and supplies to those who need it the most. Shipments are sitting in the docks because truck drivers are unreachable. Medical supplies need to be distributed but only a small fraction of the hospitals have working phones. My Abuelo, a cardiologist, opened his office last week but could not reach any patients to let them know.
There are also people who must ensure that they have their basic needs, and those of their family members met. As one woman explains in the USA Today video, getting water simply to bathe and flush toilets, potable water, gasoline, and food, are each day-long activities. If you’re lucky, at night you get to unwind with your family and fellow neighbors and play a game of Dominos. Communications would play a key role in ensuring that the hardest hit areas get priority access to supplies, thus alleviating some of those daily burdens. Yet, three weeks post storm, the ability to communicate is a luxury.
Lack of communications in a connected world is isolating, and Puerto Ricans already feel abandoned.
The most recent FCC report from October 13th shows that in Puerto Rico, 75.9% of cell sites are still out of service, which yes, is some improvement from the initial high of 95.6% reported after the storm. But the improvements are minimal and often times the FCC reports “virtually no change” from one day to the next. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, 76.6% of cell sites were out of service after Maria, and now that outages dropped to 56.2%. The island of St. John, however, is still 100% without cell service.
But there is some hope.
To start, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, along with our allies at Center for Media Justice, Color of Change, Free Press and Public Knowledge last Friday sent a letter to the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to take additional steps to remedy the communications crisis in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The letter recommended that the FCC convene a telephone conference of industry providers, equipment manufacturers, NGOs, and other stakeholders to organize and coordinate a response to the complete destruction of communications. Coordinating efforts amongst all these diverse groups is critical to efficiently and successfully getting communications restored.
Next, we suggested the FCC help coordinate and encourage deployment of temporary wireless networks using Wi-Fi and other unlicensed spectrum, and authorize a low-power FM stations. Much of the technology is portable and would provide a means for those some isolated places. The low-power FM stations would also help disseminate information to communities who have little access to information. We also noted that the FCC should broker temporary roaming agreements between wireless carriers to dramatically increase the availability of cell service to customers. This would ensure that individuals near a working cell tower can receive service, regardless of their wireless carrier. As a point of reference, these recommendations were also steps taken by the FCC in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and therefore well within the purview of the FCC.
We also acknowledged that the Chairman has taken some proactive steps, including making available close to $77 million of the FCC’s Universal Service Fund to repair and restore communications in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. We urged the Chairman and his fellow Commissioners to go beyond this initial step and continue to highlight the communications crisis and reassure the people of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands that the FCC is working for them. Finally, we noted that this extraordinary circumstance calls for innovation solutions and asked the FCC to encourage and support new solutions.
Some of our recommendations seem to be underway. In the October 10th report the FCC noted that “[t]he four major wireless companies have opened up roaming on the islands so that they, collectively, can serve the maximum population of the islands with the current coverage available.” Then the October 12th report stated that due to these arrangements, approximately 60% of the population was reported to be covered by wireless carriers in Puerto Rico. Things are very slowly on the up and up.
And then there were the balloons.
Over this past weekend the FCC Chairman released a statement that the FCC granted an experimental license to Google’s parent company Alphabet to provide emergency cellular service in Puerto Rico.
The experimental license is for Project Loon, a network of balloons that fly at approximately 65,000 feet in the Earth’s stratosphere that can provide cellular LTE services to users on the ground. In its application, Loon Inc. requested to fly up to 30 balloons and received consent letters from all providers to use their frequencies to transmit cell service to those on the ground.
According to the Project Loon website, the driving force behind this “moonshot” project is that half of the world still lacks Internet connectivity. Loon was envisioned as a means to extend Internet to “rural and remote parts of the world.” But this technology is proving exceedingly helpful in disaster relief. In May, Peru experienced extreme rain and flooding impacting connectivity, and Loon was able to bring tens of thousands of Peruvians back online. Now in Puerto Rico, as reported through El Nuevo Día, Loon’s goal is to bring the entire island back online using 10 balloons. This is one example of a company stepping up to the plate to help fellow Americans in desperate need.
However, the lack of power is severely hampering efforts to get cell towers up and running. Over 80% of the island of Puerto Rico is still without power. So it is promising when people like Elon Musk propose to rebuild the island’s electrical infrastructure with solar panels. I sincerely hope that these possibilities are just the first of many to come.
Alphabet and the FCC should be credited for proposing and authorizing an experimental solution to the communications crisis, but we must not keep other solutions off the table.
The FCC plays a central role in facilitating communications relief and granted the experimental license in record time. Since the first balloons were launched on Monday, the success of the experiment is still unknown, but we need to acknowledge that this is an innovative and outside-the-box solution to an immediate and lingering communications crisis.
So before we all pat ourselves on the back, we need to track how the new solutions are working and continue to push for additional innovative solutions to solve the communications crisis. We must wage on until the power grid and communications are 100% up and running, because only then can life start to return back to normal for our fellow Americans on the islands.
