Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai on Tuesday asked wireless carriers to waive bills for people affected by Hurricane Michael.

The Category 4 storm, with 155-mile-per-hour winds, made landfall in the Florida Panhandle on Oct. 10. It tore down electrical wires and ripped apart fiber networks needed for delivering broadband and mobile phone service. The death toll reached 19 on Saturday.

"Even though efforts to restore communications services have been going well in most of the areas affected by Hurricane Michael, the slow progress in restoring wireless service in areas close to where the hurricane made landfall is completely unacceptable," Pai said. "While the FCC has been in regular contact with companies serving the affected areas, I'm concerned that their actions on the ground aren't matching the urgency that we have conveyed during those conversations."

Pai said he's joining Florida Gov. Rick Scott in asking that carriers not only waive bills for customers in affected areas this month, but also "allow them to change carriers without penalty." Pai said carriers need to publicly disclose how they plan to restore service to Floridians, and he's asked the FCC's Public Safety & Homeland Security Bureau to investigate restoration efforts. 

Verizon said Monday that service had been restored to 98 percent of its affected customers in Florida, but areas around Panama City, Panama City Beach and surrounding communities still didn't have reliable cell service. AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile also said they had restored service in most areas but still were experiencing outages in the Florida Panhandle. The FCC said Monday that around 300,000 households still didn't have home internet, phone or TV service in Florida, Georgia and Alabama on Sunday.