FCC May Delay WEA/EAS Tests Because of Hurricane

The FCC is considering delaying Thursday's first national test of wireless emergency alerts, followed by an emergency alert system test, because of Hurricane Florence, wireless industry officials said Friday as the storm was hitting. The agency granted some telecom leeway during the storm, and also released its first outage report.

The Public Safety Bureau order allowing what was to have been this week's test included a backup date of Oct. 3 (see 1807200035). The Federal Emergency Management Agency requested a waiver to conduct the WEA test. “We agree with FEMA, as noted in its letter, that it is important to ‘determine if carrier WEA configuration, systems, and networks can and will process a Presidential WEA delivering the message via all WEA enabled cell sites with minimal latency,’” the bureau said in the July order. The commission didn’t comment now.

“Hurricane Florence has had some impact on communication infrastructure, primarily in North Carolina,” said Friday’s FCC disaster information reporting service report. The report showed 66,889 cable and wireline subscribers out of service in North Carolina, 1,470 in South Carolina, six in Georgia, and none in Virginia. 2.9 percent of cellsites in the affected area are out of service, but all public safety answering points in the disaster areas are fully functional. “There are no cell sites affected in Virginia,” the report said. Two TV stations and 11 FM stations reported being out of service. Two more FM stations were down but have sent programming to other stations. No AM stations were down, the report said.

The Wireline Bureau, meanwhile, is waiving until June a phone number aging rule for all carriers providing service to areas in the Carolinas and Virginia affected by Florence, said an order in Friday's Daily Digest. Carriers can temporarily disconnect service of customers -- at their request -- who can’t use their phones due to the storm or subsequent damage, and reinstate them with the same number to avoid billing issues. Ordinarily, carriers can age only numbers disconnected for 90 days before reassigning them, the order said. The waiver applies to residential customers in other areas that the president declares states of emergency during this hurricane season, the order said.

“These waivers will expire 270 days from the date the President declares a state of emergency for the area affected by the storm.” The bureau encourages carriers to port storm-affected customers “geographically outside a rate center to the extent it is technically feasible” and to waive their call forwarding, message center and voicemail service charges.

FEMA said those hit by the storm should text instead of calling. “During an emergency, phones lines may be overwhelmed. To let your loved ones know you are safe, send a text instead,” the agency urged. Matthew Berry, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's chief of staff, praised carriers Friday for offering free Wi-Fi during the disaster (see 1809130042). “Great to see communications providers taking steps like making available thousands of free WiFi hotspots in areas impacted by Hurricane Florence,” Berry tweeted.