FCC Must Provide Guidance On Natural Disasters

[Commentary] August 29 will be the 8th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a storm that left a level of devastation and death in the Gulf Coast that horrified our nation. Soon after the storm in 2005 there was an open debate about whether it was smart to rebuild in cities such as New Orleans, where the cost to build back the city’s defenses against future storms was great due to the natural terrain and the level of technology needed to do the job. Residents had to choose if they would return to their homes and invest in making their communities whole again, or simply start over in a new town where the prospects were better. This decision is not unlike what communities faced following the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy along the New York and New Jersey coast in 2012. In both instances, residents decided that their community was “stronger than the storm” and that they would restore their communities back to a place that worked for all its people and businesses.

Now the Federal Communications Commission faces a similar decision. After all previous natural disasters, such as Katrina, telecom and communications companies worked with the FCC to establish an understanding that they would, given adequate time by the agency, build back the parts of their network that had been destroyed in the disaster. Building out communications networks is expensive, time-consuming work and so the FCC set up a system under section 214(a) of the Communications Act for phone companies to ask for that needed time and flexibility.