Chairman Pai Interview: More USF Money Needed To Help Puerto Rican Communications

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, fresh off a two-day fact-finding trip to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, talks with B&C Washington Bureau Chief John Eggerton about what he saw, including devastation unlike any of the preceding hurricanes, the need for more Universal Service Fund money, the value of creative thinking about communications solutions, and the lack of an FCC field office that could have helped before and after the storm, he suggests.

Asked what his main takeaway from the trip was, Chairman Pai said, "There is serious devastation to the island that will take a great deal of effort and time to address, and even by comparison to the devastation I saw in Houston post-Harvey and in Miami post-Irma, this is an order of magnitude greater, it seemed to me.It reinforces my view that the FCC needs to think creatively about different ways to restore communications networks. Some of the actions we have already taken include the accelerated $77 million in Universal Service Funding."