Florence Cell Tower Outages Steadily Drop

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Cell tower outages in the Carolinas are all dropping now, according to Tuesday figures from the FCC’s Disaster Information Reporting System. In North Carolina, out of the 5,808 total cell sites, eight percent, or 466, were not operational yesterday. That compares to 11.8 percent Monday and 13.6 percent on Sunday.

No county has more than 35 percent of their cell sites out. At 34.8 percent, Columbus had the most outages as of yesterday. That was followed by Onslow, with 31.3 percent of sites out and Pender, with 30.3 percent out.

On Monday, carriers in Onslow County reported more than 50 percent of the cell sites were not operational. In Jones County, 38.3 percent of the 47 cell sites were offline Monday. Yesterday, that figure was down to 14.9 percent.

In South Carolina, 99.5 percent of the 4,107 total cell sites were operational as of yesterday. 19 cell sites were offline yesterday, compared to 33 on Monday and 68 on Sunday.   

In Georgia, nearly 100 percent of the 1,472 total cell sites remained operational yesterday. Only one site was reported not to be working — the same as Monday and Sunday. No cell site outages have been reported in Virginia since Hurricane Florence made landfall.

As flooding continues in the Carolinas cable and wireline outages have increased.

In North Carolina, 285,725 cable and wireline outages were reported yesterday, which may include the loss of telephone, television, and/or internet services. That compares to 187,885 outages reported on Monday. 30,053 outages were reported in South Carolina — a dramatic rise from 5,073 outages reported on Monday.

More broadcast stations are returning to air. 42 TV stations were on the air yesterday, up one from Monday. Three were off-air, down from five on Monday. 101 FMs were on-air Tuesday, 22 were off. That compares to 97 FMs on air Monday and 25 off-air.

The number of AMs on the air has remained relatively stable. 31 AMs were on the air yesterday, one more than on Monday and four were off-air.

September 19, 2018