Alexandra Fernandez Navarro is an Associate Member of the Puerto Rico Public Service Regulatory Board, a public service commission that oversees energy, telecommunications, transportation and other essential services in Puerto Rico, and a member of the Intergovernmental Advisory Board (IAC) and the Disaster Response and Recovery Working Group of the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). She is Puerto Rico’s State Broadband Leader representative at the State Broadband Leaders Network and the Digital Leaders Network of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), as well as a member of the Committee on Critical Infrastructure, the Committee on Telecommunications, the Committee on Consumers the Public Interest, and the Broadband Expansion Taskforce of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC).
She was previously an Associate Member of the Puerto Rico Telecommunications Regulatory Board, the state ESF-2 entity in charge of the restoration of telecommunications after an emergency, position that she held when Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, a Category 5 hurricane that knocked out more than 95 percent of cell sites, according to the FCC’s Disaster Information Reporting System, leaving the Island without communications and in a total power blackout. The recovery efforts included the gathering of public and private stakeholders to create a dedicated telecommunications emergency operation center (EOC) at the Government Command Center. From this EOC, state and federal agencies worked in re-establishing private and governmental communications, particularly by coordinating fueling, the security of critical infrastructure, requesting waivers from state and municipal regular permitting processes, facilitating supply chain issues and obtaining priority in port entry, the coordination of pole attachments, and the creation of a map with geocodes of telecommunication’s critical infrastructure and its interdependency with other essential services. The work also included seeking waivers for experimental technology from the FCC, among other endeavors.
Associate Member Fernandez Navarro began her professional career as a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico and has worked as an outside counsel for telecommunications providers at different law firms. She has also been an Alternate Member of the Puerto Rico Permits and Land Use Review Board and spent ten years as a hearing examiner, legal advisor, and legal director at the Puerto Rico Telecommunications Regulatory Board. She is authorized to practice law in Puerto Rico (2000); in the Federal Court for the District of Puerto Rico (2002), in the Circuit of Appeals Court for the First Circuit (2003) and in the State of Florida (2009). Fernandez Navarro has practiced law since 2001.
