Broadcast television and radio stations appeared to escape the worst of Hurricane Isaias after the storm made landfall along the Florida panhandle late Friday evening.
More than 45,700 cable and wireline subscribers are currently without service in the area of the storm’s impact, according to information released by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and reviewed by The Desk on Saturday.
But broadcasters remained on the air throughout the night and into the morning, with no AM, FM or TV stations losing their ability to transmit during the storm, the FCC noted.
The data is still preliminary and could change as broadcasters regain the ability to communicate with the agency. That communication could be made difficult by significant impacts to cable, landline phone, Internet and wireless service in the three states affected by the storm so far.
Hurricane Isaias made landfall Friday evening around 9:30 p.m. near the town of Dustin, Florida, according to a report from Fox Weather. The storm impacted the Gulf Coast as a Category 2 hurricane, bringing sustained winds of 105 miles per hour, the news outlet said.
The core remnants of Hurricane Isaias, which has since been downgraded to a post-tropical storm, will move through central and northern Alabama throughout Saturday before breaking up and impacting nearby states, including Atlanta, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Already, the storm is impacting communications infrastructure in some states. In Florida, more than 18 percent of cell phone towers were offline as of Saturday afternoon, while Alabama saw 17 percent of its cell phone towers knocked offline, according to the FCC. Mississippi reported just one cell network tower offline.
More than a dozen cell phone towers across the three states suffered structural damage, while the rest of the impacted communications towers were offline due to power outages, the FCC noted.
It can be difficult to know how many customers are impacted by offline cell phone towers, given that networks tend to overlap and roaming agreements mean subscribers can still have service. Large carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are required under federal law to open their networks through emergency roaming agreements during declared natural disasters, and they must take reasonable steps to address network-related outages immediately after a storm or other event.
In a press release on Saturday, T-Mobile said it was already committing resources to the Gulf Coast to deal with post-disaster recovery. The wireless giant said it has deployed some mobile communications towers to areas that were impacted by power outages and infrastructure damage.
