What Happens When Phone Lines are Destroyed in Storms? We Need a Good Answer.

Public Knowledge, along with 18 other public interest groups, asked the Federal Communications Commission to affirmatively create post-disaster communications policy.

PK believes that all Americans should have access to basic telephone services, regardless of location. Since the invention of the telephone, federal regulations have protected and promoted that access, as well as competition in the communications industry. Unless the FCC establishes appropriate responses for situations in which infrastructure is damaged and carriers do not wish to rebuild, policy makers will continue to improvise, carriers will continue to evade their regulatory obligations, and consumers will continue to be harmed.