Telecom Outages Now a State Secret

Saeed al-Sahaf writes "In the past, before negotiating important or large telecommunications contracts, you could check out the detailed network outage reports that large telecommunications carriers file with the FCC. By knowing where carriers had experienced problems, buyers can negotiate better service contracts and know where to plan on redundant services. As recently as last summer, the FCC championed the marketplace benefits of making outage data available to the public. But after more than a decade of making such carrier outage reports available to the public, the FCC in August ruled that the information will be kept secret, lest it fall into the hands of terrorists."

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[Anonymous Coward]

DHS Says Cellular Outage Reporting is Terrorist Blueprint

Important distinction

[erick99]

The FCC is not prohibiting the dissemination of this information, they are not going to provide it themselves, though.

The fcc did not go so far as to prohibit all network vulnerability data from reaching the public--only that the information won't reach the public via the FCC.

Telco's are still free to provide the information and apparently they have competitive reasons to do so:

Lawyers who negotiate contracts for large enterprises agreed carriers that face meaningful competition will not be inclined to stop providing relevant data, including the cause of outages, to enterprises. Some said that even where competition is not robust, carriers have an interest in being candid with their largest customers.