How Puerto Rico is Rebuilding Its Network Three Months After Maria

Puerto Rico's post-Maria communications effort could serve as a disaster-response playbook for other governments. Three months after Maria made landfall, rolled back regulations, experimental technologies and portable satellite terminals have helped the government and private-sector restore communications across more than 85 percent of the island. 

“No one prepares for the complete loss of the communication network,” said Luis Arocho, the chief information officer of Puerto Rico. “What happened in Puerto Rico has never happened with a major disaster in the United States.” After the storm shuttered ports and stranded relief supplies 1,000 miles away on the mainland, Arocho began working with the telecommunication industry to clear red tape and get them working on the network in as little time as possible. He also brought industry leaders together to flesh out an open roaming agreement that would allow Puerto Ricans’ smartphones to jump from one carrier’s network to another. This way people could call and send text messages wherever there was a signal, regardless of whose network it was. Arocho thinks open roaming should be part of the playbook for future disaster responses, and governments should be proactive in building a plan. It took more than a week to fine tune the common network in Puerto Rico, he said, but if the system is configured in advance of the emergency, officials can immediately flip on the switch and it’ll “be working like a charm.”