US telecoms behemoth AT&T has settled for nearly a million dollars over an outage that left users unable to contact emergency services.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reached a settlement agreement with AT&T after the comms watchdog investigated whether the company violated federal rules. According to the FCC, the 911 outage occurred after portions of the AT&T network went down during testing in August 2023.
“Service providers have an obligation to transmit 911 calls and notify 911 call centers of outages in a timely manner,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.
The settlement will require AT&T to pay $950,000 and implement a three-year compliance plan designed to ensure future compliance with the FCC’s 911 and outage notification rules. The measures should encourage the company to avoid future mishaps, as last year’s outage affected part of several US states, including Illinois, Kansas, Texas, and Wisconsin.
“The FCC’s 911 call delivery and notification requirements are critical to public safety,” said Loyaan A. Egal, Chief of the FCC Enforcement Bureau.
The FCC claims that the 2023 outage occurred when the company was testing parts of the 911 network. During the exercise, an AT&T contractor’s technician inadvertently disabled a portion of the network. The company’s system did not adjust to accommodate the disabled portion of the network, leaving many unable to call for emergency services.
Since the testing exercise was not part of any planned maintenance activities, the mandatory technical review was not applied, resulting in connection loss. The 911 outage lasted for 74 minutes, and 400 failed 911 calls resulted, the FCC said.
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