FCC says Hurricane Sandy knocked out 25 percent of cell towers in its path

Hurricane Sandy knocked out 25 percent of the cell towers in affected regions, the Federal Communications Commission said. The hurricane has also disrupted cable TV, broadband Internet and landline phone service for 25 percent of customers in the affected areas, according to the FCC. About 7 to 8 million people are currently without power.

"The storm is not over. Our assumption is that communications outages could get worse before they get better — particularly for mobile," said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. He said flooding, power outages, high winds and snow disabled the cell towers, leaving millions of customers without service. He emphasized that in the hardest areas, far more than 25 percent of towers were disabled, but in other areas, the figure is lower. Many towers that are still in service are running on backup generators, according to David Turetsky, chief of the FCC's public safety bureau. Turetsky said carriers have already begun recovery efforts, but he warned that flooding could cause more power outages and disable more cell towers. Chairman Genachowski said a "very small number" of 911 call centers also went down as a result of the storm. He said some 911 centers had to redirect calls to other centers, but those redirected calls lacked information about the caller's location. He urged people to only call 911 if there is a "life-threatening emergency" and said people should limit non-essential phone calls.

The FCC chairman said texting and social media are good alternatives to long phone calls that clog the airwaves.