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AT&T Suffers Massive 14 State 911 Outage

AT&T last night suffered a massive 911 outage preventing its wireless customers in fourteen states from making emergency phone calls. The outage prevented emergency calls for about 90 minutes Wednesday night, and began around 5:49 PM EST when Monongalia County Homeland Security Emergency Management Agency in West Virginia reported the problem on Facebook. That was followed up by similar complaints in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia -- and Washington.

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AT&T has yet to provide an explanation for the outage, nor has it provided details on how it was resolved.

"Service has been restored for wireless customers affected by an issue connecting to 911," is all AT&T would say of the major problem. "We apologize to those affected."

FCC boss Ajit Pai, historically soft on enforcement actions against companies like AT&T for things like cramming, lying about throttling, or directory assistance scams said the FCC would investigate the cause of the protracted outage.

»twitter.com/AjitPaiFCC/s ··· rc%5Etfw

Most recommended from 26 comments



imanogre
join:2005-11-29
Smyrna, GA

21 recommendations

imanogre

Member

Thankfully

Ajit Pai is on it!!!! /s

Watch him blame this outage on Net Neutrality
boredsysadm
join:2012-01-11

2 edits

5 recommendations

boredsysadm

Member

I expect at the most they would get gentle slap on the wrist.

Normally I'd want any telco to pay DEARLY for such crucial infrastructure outage, but with their paid and bought over dog at the reins I expect at the most they would get gentle slap on the wrist.

Edit : replaced "with blood" with "Dearly", not to upset some more sensitive folks
Ostracus
join:2011-09-05
Henderson, KY

5 recommendations

Ostracus

Member

Reaping and sowing.

I see a rock and a hard place coming up. The rock is someone dying from incidents like this. The hard place is all this being traced back to the FCC chairman's soft touch with companies he's suppose to regulate and the resulting public outrage.
tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Brooklyn, NY

3 recommendations

tmc8080

Member

fines

maybe those fines for this happening should go as refunds to the customers' monthly bills who pay for monthly access. if ATT lost the entire month's revenue (911, e911 surcharges via voip & land line and cellular) back to its customers, maybe they would have an incentive to keep the 911 system working properly!
alexintexas
join:2003-01-11
San Antonio, TX

3 recommendations

alexintexas

Member

House of Cards

or AKA WH will just blame Russia hacking.............

in all seriousness in major metro cities most already know 911 is more times than not USELESS!!! I can't stress enough know your LOCAL EMERGENCY # besides 911