More than 90% of cell sites remained out of service today in Puerto Rico, while more than 61% remained down in the U.S. Virgin Islands due to Hurricane Maria, the FCC reported today.  “Overall, 90.9% (slightly down from 91.2% yesterday) of cell sites are out of service. All counties in Puerto Rico have greater than 75% of their cell sites out of service. 29 (down from 34 yesterday) out of the 78 counties in Puerto Rico have 100% of their cell sites out of service,” the FCC said in an outages report that uses data submitted to the Commission’s Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS).

For the Virgin Islands, “61.3% (slightly up from 60.4% yesterday) of cell sites are out of service,” the report said.

“The two PSAPs [public safety answering points] in Puerto Rico are currently functioning normally according to the primary service provider,” the report said. “In the U.S. Virgin Islands, the St. Croix 9-1-1 Call Center has been reported as completely down. FEMA has reported significant damage to the building. The St. Thomas 9-1-1 Call Center is unable to retrieve Phase I and Phase II location information for wireless callers and ANI/ALI for VoIP Callers.”

The report still did not provide specific data on cable and wireline system outages, but it said that 18 switches, the same as yesterday, were “out of service due to either SS7 or toll isolation.”

The report also said that no TV stations reported being out of service in the affected areas and eight radio stations in Puerto Rico said they were down. It said that “informal reports” indicated that two TV stations and 22 radio stations were on the air in Puerto Rico. —Paul Kirby, paul.kirby@wolterskluwer.com

Courtesy TRDaily