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"The reality is the FCC is not in an advanced

Dec. 17, 2018 by James Ashley

"The reality is the FCC is not in an advanced phase in addressing the problem of outages in the mobile market. It may work for some, but that's not how we see it," said Robert Rauch, vice chairman of the Commission's consumer group.

"The only thing that's working is a fix on the phone network issue, which is that it's an aging, aging device that you can't fix."

The problem is that most home Internet service in the United States is at a standstill, said Greg Bongos, assistant administrator with the FCC's Office of Service Data and Communications.

"When you have a lot of outages, you're going to have to build a new system that's going to be in place by the time you get there," he said.

FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler has said that while home Internet service is the "first of many steps we'll take to fix the problem," the agency said it now believes the problem is the only one that needs to be addressed.

Bongos said that although the agency will still be adding new services this fall, the goal is to keep the network up to date and provide coverage for about a quarter of all customers by 2015.

"We've got to continue to fix this and help everybody, and that's just going to be the first step of the process," he said. "We're not looking to have a situation where there's nothing we can do to fix it."

The FCC also has announced the addition of a new toll-free service called MetroToll to add service to all Verizon Wireless customers in the United States. The plan includes toll-free coverage on its wireless network as well.

"We've got a lot of work ahead of us in making sure that all our customers make sure they get the service they want," Wheeler said. "This is an ongoing effort. We're trying to figure out what will work on certain lines."

The agency's plan to expand toll-free coverage is just one part of its efforts to address the problem.

Since the hurricane, AT&T has rolled out 3 million new AT&T mobile service plans across several states, including the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands.

"The fact that it's happening so fast to do so much in this part of the country shows that there's a lot of work to be done to address this problem," said Paul Pritchard, president of the group Consumers for Choice.

The FCC's public records request