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Limited Print and Electronic Distribution RightsThis document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.

In September 2017, following two catastrophic hurricanes, Puerto Rico's wireline, wireless and cable networks were rendered largely inoperable. As this article will illustrate, the causes of this devastating failure of the telecommunications sector were not attributable to Hurricanes Irma and Maria alone. The hurricanes revealed the fragility of Puerto Rico's telecommunications infrastructure, which failed, leaving the majority of Puerto Rican citizens without a means to communicate by phone or by Internet or to reach 911 for emergency services for weeks or months. This article will also sum-marize the 33 courses of action (COAs) for rebuilding the telecom-munications sector that were proposed by the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center, a Federally Funded Research and De-velopment Center (FFRDC) operated by the RAND Corporation and adopted by the government of Puerto Rico. These COAs were prepared as part of the Congressionally mandated Puerto Rico eco-nomic and disaster recovery plan. Even though significant progress has been made toward recovery in Puerto Rico, substantial invest-ment is still required to achieve a resilient and robust telecommunications sector. The estimated cost for the 33 COAs was $3.2 bil-lion. The overall cost estimate for the Puerto Rico recovery plan, including all sectors, was $139 billion.

Limited Print and Electronic Distribution RightsThis document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.