Fergie's Tech Blog

FCC Seeks New Bureau For Disaster Management

Paul Kapustka writes in Advanced IP Pipeline:

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin on Thursday proposed the creation of a new internal bureau inside the agency to coordinate the planning and response actions for communications services during national disasters, as part of the agency’s response to communications failures in the face of Hurricane Katrina.

Speaking at the end of the commission’s monthly open meeting -- which was broadcast on the Web from the Atlanta-based emergency-operations center of telecom provider BellSouth -- Martin said that in addition to the new bureau, the FCC would also provide approximately $200 million in financial assistance to telecom customers and companies, and also convene an “expert panel” to review what lessons might be learned from the effects of Katrina.

Martin’s comments followed those from a long list of telecommunications and broadcast industry representatives, who mostly detailed what damage Katrina had inflicted on their infrastructures, and how they had responded in their attempts to restore service. According to Ken Moran, the FCC’s director of its office of homeland security, there are still almost 350,000 customers without wireline phone service, and still three 911 centers in Louisiana that are inoperable.

posted by Fergie @ 9/15/2005 02:11:00 PM