After Hurricane Katrina, lack of dependable cell phone service was one of the major problems for those of us who were in New Orleans and the surrounding areas. And when I say “surrounding” I don’t just mean the Greater New Orleans area; I’m talking about over hundred miles away. Katrina caused huge areas in Louisiana and Mississippi to lose power, and also damaged many cell towers. At the same time, people had an even greater need to use cellphones to try to locate friends and families, putting even greater strain on the networks. As a result, it was incredibly difficult to use a cellphone to make a call. I remember driving around Mississippi to find a spot with weak cellphone connectivity and then having to redial over-and-over again to try to get service. And I remember how relieved I was every time I was able to confirm someone’s safety and whereabouts. Back in 2005, text messaging was far less popular than it is today, and many folks (me included) discovered that even if you couldn’t make or receive a call, you could often make and receive text messages. Even a limited ability to send and receive text messages made a huge difference in the recovery effort. And Katrina was not unique in this respect; I’ve heard many stories of other disasters after which it was difficult to use cellphones.
The situation in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria is horrible on many different levels, but I know that one of the many problems is limited to non-existent cellphone service. Thus, I was delighted to read an article by Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch describing how better cellphone service will soon be coming to Puerto Rico through the combined efforts of many different parties. Panzarino provides the details, but in short, AT&T and Apple are tapping into a currently-unused (and unlicensed) part of the spectrum which will let working cellphone towers do more, Google is sending its Project Loon balloons to the region to provide even greater cellphone coverage, and the FCC is giving emergency licenses to make all of this possible. The article says that the additional coverage will still be limited, but it should be enough for many more folks to send text messages.
I have no doubt that this joint effort will do a lot of good as folks in Puerto Rico undertake the long recovery process.