Verizon fiber suffered “unprecedented” damage from Hurricane Michael

Enlarge / Vehicles sit partially submerged in floodwaters after Hurricane Michael hit in Panama City, Florida, US, on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2018. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Nearly 300,000 households were still without home Internet, phone, or TV service yesterday in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, as telcos scramble to repair networks damaged by Hurricane Michael. More than 200,000 of the households without cable or wireline service are in Florida, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

Mobile service has also taken a big hit, with outages affecting about 15 percent of cell sites in the 21 Florida counties where the FCC is tracking hurricane-related outages.

Carriers have made progress in reducing those outage numbers the past few days. Nearly 29 percent of tracked cell sites in Florida were out as of October 11, but the outage rate has been nearly cut in half since.

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