Connecting the Dots: The Telecommunications Crisis in Puerto Rico

The report condemns the Federal Communications Commission for failing to adequately respond to the September 2017 hurricanes, which knocked out 95 percent of all cell sites, 97 percent of radio stations and all local television stations. The report calls out the agency’s failure to hold wired and wireless carriers to account for neglecting to build resilient networks or respond in a timely or sufficient fashion to restore communications to the islands’ residents. The report urges the FCC to form an independent commission to investigate the communications crisis, which contributed to the deaths of thousands.

Free Press also released the FCC’s initial response to its ongoing Freedom of Information Act request for consumer complaints received from wired and wireless customers in Puerto Rico following the hurricanes’ devastation. The complaints offer a small window into a much larger problem in Puerto Rico, where many of the principal carriers promised automatic refunds and relief for the extensive loss of services but seemingly failed to deliver. The Free Press report and FOIA response reveal a shocking double standard at the Trump FCC, where the agency has failed to investigate and hold carriers accountable for the widespread and prolonged outages following Hurricanes Irma and Maria. By contrast, the FCC conducted a far more rigorous investigation into the communications failures that followed Hurricane Michael, which struck Florida in October 2018. But the FCC has ignored calls to conduct a similar analysis in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Connecting the Dots features the perspectives of people living in Puerto Rico. Free Press worked in partnership with Resilient Just Technologies and the Center for Embodied Pedagogy and Action to collect stories from those in the storm’s path. The report draws from these accounts to call for an independent investigation and propose a series of policy changes for Congress, the FCC and other federal agencies to adopt to fully understand what went wrong and to prevent the islands’ communications networks from collapsing in the future. These recommendations also apply to other parts of the country that suffer from violent storms.