Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Rosenworcel Cites Preparations for Hurricane Season

As Atlantic hurricane season begins, Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel highlighted actions the agency has taken to help the public reach emergency services, receive emergency information, and communicate during disasters. Chairwoman Rosenworcel also cited steps that state officials and consumers can take to prepare for hurricanes, wildfires, and other disasters. Chairwoman Rosenworcel encouraged state public safety partners to learn how they can use the FCC’s Mandatory Disaster Response Initiative and Outage Information Sharing programs to best serve their communities, and also suggested consumers review the FCC’s tips for staying connected during emergencies. Among actions the FCC has taken in recent years to promote communications reliability and public safety:

• Mandatory Disaster Response Initiative (MDRI): New FCC rules, in effect as of May, require wireless providers to engage in specific actions, including establishing roaming agreements and sharing physical assets, to reduce the impact of wireless outages and support faster service restoration during emergencies.
• Outage Information Sharing: The FCC shares communications outage information submitted to the agency by industry with first responders and other emergency management personnel in state, federal, territorial, and Tribal agencies.
• Improving Outage Reporting: The FCC updated its rules, and proposed additional updates, to improve communications network reliability, resiliency, and transparency during disasters and outages.
• Multilingual Emergency Alerting: New rules will add support for additional languages and features to Wireless Emergency Alerts.