After Hurricane Maria hit the region on September 20, millions of Puerto Ricans have been suffering from crippled infrastructure, with access to food, electricity, clean water and mobile signal severely limited since. 83 per cent of mobile sites are out of service, the FCC reports, and more than 90 per cent of its mobile towers are inoperable.
Since then, telecommunications companies have been deploying temporary mobile sites and US FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced the formation of a Hurricane Recovery Task Force.
Among other actions, the FCC has awarded Alphabet – Google’s parent company – an experimental license to operate in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in order to help them regain connectivity. This license gives Alphabet until April 2018 to roll out the project.
Its purpose is to “support licensed mobile carriers’ restoration of limited communications capability in areas of Puerto Rico and the [US] Virgin Islands affected by Hurricanes Irma...