Nearly half a million Floridians have been left without power after Hurricane Ian

Federal watchdogs and private companies that monitor connectivity said that areas of the Florida southwest coast were experiencing widespread cellphone and internet outages on Thursday after getting battered by Hurricane Ian.

More than half a million Floridians have lost their landline telephone, home internet, cable services or some combination of those, according to a status report from the Federal Communications Commission on the damage to Florida s telecommunications services.

The report found that about 11% of cell towers across the state were out of service. It is particularly bad in four counties — Lee, Hardee, Henry and Charlotte — where more than 60% of towers are not functioning.

Local power providers depend on local power providers to keep running even though the storm has passed Florida. They may rely on backup generators in emergency situations, but they will run out of fuel.

More than 2.6 million Floridians had no power as of Thursday afternoon, according to Poweroutage.us, a website that tracks live power data from many but not all American utilities companies.

Chris Hillis, a co-founder of the Information Technology Disaster Resource Center, said that work to restore connectivity in Florida had only just begun, as he traveled to U.S. disaster areas and works to restore basic communications for key places like fire stations and emergency shelters.

Hillis said it was still super early. We are still trying to get our teams in there. Big internet providers keep real-time data on their customers' internet access, but they do not make that information public even in emergency situations.

Some areas around the Gulf Coast were experiencing moderate to severe power outages Tuesday, according to outside groups that track internet connectivity.

Internet access was particularly hard hit in Fort Myers, where there is a near-total blackout, said Doug Madory, head of research at Kentik, a company that monitors internet networks.

Isik Mater, the director of research at Netblocks, said that Xfinity service in the town of Port Charlotte was nearly nonexistent, and only about 26% in Sarasota. Xfinity is owned by Comcast, which also owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News. Xfinity and Frontier declined to share figures on internet outages, but spokespeople for both companies told NBC News that most of their service blackouts along the Gulf Coast were due to power outages, and that they hoped most of their customers could get back online soon after power is restored in their areas.