FCC Cuts Back Post-Harvey Reporting Counties

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published

The FCC and FEMA have reduced the number of counties to 13 for which it has asked communications providers in Texas to report on their status post-Hurricane Harvey. That is down from a peak of 64 reporting counties and is according to the FCC's disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS), which relies on voluntary industry self-reporting.

In those remaining 13 counties, 2.4% of cell cites are out of service as of midday Sunday (Sept.3) compared to 3.6% in those same counties the day before. Three of those counties have more than 10% outages, Aransas, Calhoun, and Orange.

Cable outages were 164,544 in those counties, down from 179,981 in the same areas the day before.

Seven radio stations and two TV stations, KDFM and KBTV, remain off the air, the same as the day before.

John Eggerton
John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.