How Cellphone Companies Have Resisted Rules for Disasters

Cell phone carriers have successfully pushed back against rules on what they have to do in a disaster. The carriers insist that emergency standards should be voluntary, an approach the Federal Communications Commission has gone along with.

After Hurricane Katrina, for instance, carriers successfully opposed a federal rule that would have required them to have 24-hours of backup power on cell towers. In another instance, an FCC program to track crucial information during an emergency — such as which areas are down and the status of efforts to bring the network back — remains entirely voluntary. Nor is the information collected made public. After Sandy, when thousands roamed the streets looking for service, many had no idea where they could get a signal. AT&T and Sprint, among the major carriers, didn't initially release details on what portion of their network was down. The emergency issue has been part of a trend in deregulation of the telecommunications industry. Since 2010, more than 20 states have passed laws limiting their regulation of telecoms. "The FCC is very concerned about the nature of their overall authority and whether rules would survive a court challenge," says Harold Feld, senior vice president of Public Knowledge, a technology advocacy nonprofit. "So their approach is to push and nudge and come up with things that would be more acceptable to the industry." "Traditional carriers had reliability requirements, and reporting requirements," says Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a former technology adviser to President Obama. "We treat wireless and broadband much differently."