How Cellphone Companies Have Resisted Rules for Disasters
by Cora Currier, Pro Publica:
In a natural disaster or other emergency, one of the first things you’re likely to reach for is your cellphone. Landlines are disappearing [1]. More than 30 percent of American households now rely exclusively on cellphones [2].
Despite that, cell carriers have successfully pushed back against rules on what they have to do in a disaster. The carriers instead insist that emergency standards should be voluntary, an approach the Federal Communications Commission has gone along with.
After Hurricane Katrina, for instance, carriers successfully opposed [3] a federal rule that would have required them to have 24-hours of backup power on cell towers. In another instance, an FCC program to track crucial information during an emergency — such as which areas are down and the status of efforts to bring the network back — remains entirely voluntary [4]. Nor is the information collected made public.
2012-12-04 12:26:21
Source: http://sgtreport.com/2012/12/how-cellphone-companies-have-resisted-rules-for-disasters/
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