Roughly three million households had no power in Florida on Thursday morning after Hurricane Milton tore through the state Wednesday evening. The FCC’s first Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) for the storm shows nearly the entire state impacted.
A little over 12 percent (1,953) of the 15,877 cell sites in DIRS for Milton were not working on Thursday morning, according to information provided to the agency by carriers. Of those, 1,351 had no power and 562 had data transport problems. Another 612 were operating on back-up power.
The west coast bore the brunt of the hurricane and the outages. Sarasota County had the most cell sites impacted, with 144 out of 309 not working (46.3 percent), according to DIRS. Fifty-six had no power and 87 had data transport issues. Another 26 sites were running on back-up power.
Polk County had the second-most cell site outages, with 265 out of 573 sites not operational (46.3 percent). Nearly 160 had data transport issues and 105 sites had no power. An additional 41 cell sites were using back-up power.
Cable and wireline companies reported 1.2 million subscribers out of service in the disaster area. This includes the loss of telephone, television, and/or internet services.
Three TV stations were off the air as were 10 FM stations. Four AMs were reported to be off-air as well.
The FCC Office of International Affairs granted a temporary, limited Special Temporary Authority to SpaceX to conduct supplemental coverage from space in the 1910–1915 MHz and 1990–1995 MHz bands leased from T-Mobile in Milton-impacted areas of Florida. The Wireless Telecommunications Bureau conditionally granted requests from Google LLC and Federated Wireless, Inc. for a precautionary, limited, and conditional emergency waiver of the rules governing the Citizens Broadband Radio Service.
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
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