Cell tower outages in all the areas affected by Hurricane Florence continue to go down, but the figures in North Carolina dropped by half, according to Wednesday figures from the FCC’s Disaster Information Reporting System.
In North Carolina, out of the 5,808 total cell sites, more than four percent, or 245, were not operational yesterday. The outages dropped by more than half compared to Tuesday, when eight percent, or 466, were out of service. That compares to 11.8 percent Monday and 13.6 percent on Sunday.
The county with the highest number of non-working cell sites is Carteret, with 22 of 103 out, or just over 21 percent. Tuesday, Columbus had the most outages at 34.8 percent. Yesterday, that figure dropped to eight cell site outages, or 8.7 percent.
In South Carolina, the number of cell sites out remained steady at 19 out of 4,107.
In Georgia, all of the 1,472 total cell sites are working. Only one site was reported not to be working earlier in the week. Virginia had no cell site outages since the hurricane made landfall. Because of the low numbers, the FCC discontinued DIRS for South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia. That means carriers and broadcasters don’t need to provide any additional reporting in DIRS for these areas regarding Hurricane Florence. The Commission will continue to monitor the status of communications services and work with providers and government partners in these areas as needed to support remaining restoration efforts.
Flooding continues in the Carolinas, however cable and wireline outages have begun to slowly drop. In North Carolina, 283,327 cable and wireline outages were reported yesterday, compared to 285,725 on Tuesday. Those outages may include the loss of telephone, television, and/or internet services. 29,014 outages were reported in South Carolina, compared to 30,053 on Tuesday.
There was little change in broadcast numbers Wednesday. 42 TV stations were on the air, and three were off-air, the same as Tuesday. 102 FMs were on-air Wednesday, and 23 were off — the same as Tuesday.
The number of AMs on the air has remained relatively stable. 32 AMs were on the air yesterday, one more than Tuesday and three were off-air.
September 20, 2018
