More than 7 million subscribers to cable or wireline telecom services have lost service due to Hurricane Irma.

"There are at least 7,184,909 (down from 7,597,945 yesterday) subscribers out of service in the affected areas in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia," the Federal Communications Commission reported Tuesday in its latest storm update. These are subscribers to Internet, TV, or phone service or some combination of the three.

In addition to those 7 million, many subscribers in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands lost service. "Since there are widespread power outages in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, the FCC has received reports that large percentages of consumers are without either cable services or wireline service. Companies are actively working to restoring service," the FCC said.

The FCC has been requiring providers to report outage figures to the commission each day during the storm, but the publicly available numbers do not include outage figures for each ISP. Comcast, AT&T, Charter, CenturyLink, and Frontier are among the providers trying to keep customers connected in the areas hit by Hurricane Irma.

As for wireless connectivity, 24.6 percent of cell sites in Florida were out of service yesterday, the FCC said. Five Florida counties (Collier, Hendry, Highlands, Monroe, and Union) had outages in more than 50 percent of cell sites.

More than 10 percent of cell sites were out in the portion of Georgia affected by the storm. Fewer than 1 percent of cell sites in Alabama's disaster areas were out of service. In Puerto Rico, 14.5 percent of cell sites were out of service, and 53.8 percent of cell sites in the US Virgin Islands were out of service.

(UPDATE: The number of cable and wireline subscribers without service in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia went up to 8,190,407 on Wednesday, September 13, according to a new update from the FCC.)

Power outages and network damage

Power outages are a major contributor to the cable and wireline disruptions, and those outages could persist for weeks. There were 819 non-mobile switching centers out in Florida yesterday, up from 390 the day before but none in Alabama and Georgia, the FCC said.

The telecom providers also suffered damage to their networks.

"The overall impact is a combination of commercial power outages as well as damage to our system," a Comcast spokesperson told Ars today. "At this time, we are continuing to assess impact and make restorations where we can... our crews work closely with emergency management personnel and in many cases they need to give clearance that it’s safe for our crews to begin to re-enter impacted areas."

Some customers have electricity but no Internet service. "[T]he Miami Herald and the Twitter feeds of Comcast and AT&T received hundreds of complaints from customers with power but no Wi-Fi or TV services," the Herald reported yesterday.

Comcast, the biggest cable and broadband provider in the US, declined to say how many of its customers have lost service. Comcast said it made 150,000 of its Wi-Fi hotspots in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina available to anyone during the storm, even non-Comcast subscribers. "Those hotspots remain open to help residents and emergency personnel stay connected," Comcast said.

Frontier’s FiOS customers take a hit

In a press release on Monday, Frontier said that about 50 percent of its Florida customers did not have power. "Our biggest issue continues to be getting commercial power back in working order to determine who is really having an issue [with Frontier systems]," a Frontier spokesperson told Ars today.

Frontier owns some FiOS systems formerly owned by Verizon. "FiOS services are dependent on commercial power. As that is restored, those services should return to working order. The 100-percent fiber FiOS network is buried and water does not impact it," Frontier said in the Monday announcement.

Copper-based phone and DSL services could remain online. "Part of Frontier’s emergency preparedness is to supply central offices with generator-based power to keep voice services running," the company said. "If the customer has power and their router is working, customers may also find their High-Speed Internet service (DSL) is also working. If no services are working, there may be network or on-site damage."

In some cases, backup power supply in the home might keep Internet service running.

Frontier suspended operations in affected areas temporarily but resumed work yesterday.

Charter's Florida division said it is "ready and responding to the impact from Hurricane Irma." Charter customers are also suffering storm-related outages in Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina. Charter said that most of its outages in Asheville, North Carolina, were caused by "'commercial power failures' in residential areas and parts of the local Spectrum network," the Asheville Citizen-Times reported yesterday.

AT&T wireline services for some customers in Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia have been disrupted by flooding and storm damage, AT&T told Ars today.

"Our technicians are working to restore service to affected areas as quickly and safely as conditions allow," AT&T said. "Our Network Disaster Recovery team is dispatching more than 20 pieces of recovery equipment in Florida, including four portable cell sites in the Florida Keys. We are monitoring our network closely and are coordinating with emergency management officials and local utility companies."

AT&T wireless services in North and South Carolina are "nearly full restored," while "some parts of Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands are being affected by significant power outages and other storm damage," the company said. AT&T is giving free calls and texts to wireless customers in areas hit by Irma.

CenturyLink said before the storm that it had "plans in place for restoring services, should they be impacted, as quickly as possible."

We asked Charter and CenturyLink for updates today and will update this story if we get any responses.

Disclosure: The Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which owns about 13 percent of Charter, is part of Advance Publications. Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica.