Slashdot Mirror
Verizon Drops 10,000 911 Calls During Blizzard
mschaffer noted a Bloomberg piece saying
"US regulators said Verizon Communications Inc.'s networks may have dropped a 'truly alarming' number of wireless emergency calls during a snow storm last month, and asked the carrier to investigate." The article says 10,000 calls failed to connect during one blizzard. Can't wait to see what all those AT&T migrators think.
It wasn't Verizon Wireless that dropped the calls, it was Verizon Landline that lost 14 CAMA trunks used by ALL wireless carriers. Also, the calls weren't dropped, they got busy signals. Bad, but different and comparing Verizon Wireless to AT&T Wireless are irrelevant to this story.
Try it.
Lines without service in the USA by law have tone and will dial 911 or let you order service. If you dial any other number it tells you that you do not have service and asks if you would like to get it.
The wikipedia article covers it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-1-1
The FCC rule can be found
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Reports/FCC-State_Link/IAD/pntris99.pdf
http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2011/db0218/DA-11-328A1.pdf
Kathleen M. Grub
Senior Vice President
Public Affairs, Policy & Communications
Verizon Communications
1300 I St. NW, Room 400W
Washington, DC USA 20005
Re: Failed 9-1-1 Calls During January 26, 2011 Snowstorm
Dear Ms. Grub,
The FCC has received reports that during the snowstorm that hit the Washington D.C. region on January 26, 2011, approximately 8,300 wireless
9-1-1 calls to the Montgomery County Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), routed over the Verizon network, were not connected, and an additional 1,700
wireless calls to the Prince George's County PSAP were not connected. I know that you will agree that any 9-1-1 call which is not connected can have serious
consequences, but the large number of missed 9-1-1 calls on January 26 is truly alarming. I therefore request that Verizon provide an explanation of the causes
of this and similar failures, provide Verizon's assessment of the possibility of occurrence in other locations and describe what actions Verizon is taking to
prevent recurrence of these problems.
Here is a synopsis of what we understand so far. Through our initial discussions with various parties, including representatives of Verizon, we have
learned that the Montgomery County PSAP has fourteen trunks that handle wireless calls, seven each from the Rockville and Hyattsville Selective Routers.
The trunks from these Selective Routers to the PSAPs are maintained by Verizon (not Verizon Wireless), and there are separate trunks for wireline, wireless and
VoIP calls. At approximately 5:15 p.m. on January 26, Verizon's system automatically took one of the wireless 9-1-1 trunks out of service. It is our
understanding that this was not an overload. We understand that it is normal in large-scale emergencies for the call volume to exceed the trunk capacity, in
which case calls will be blocked until another trunk opens up. In this instance, however, the Verizon system took each of the fourteen trunks handling wireless
calls out of service sequentially so that they could not receive any more calls. By 8:45 p.m., the problem had cascaded to the other thirteen 9-1-1 trunks handling
wireless calls, so that all of the trunks handling wireless 9-1-1 traffic in Montgomery County were taken out of service by the system.
These trunks have working alarms, but Verizon did not notify the PSAPs of the failure after the alarms went off. The Montgomery County PSAP
recognized the problem just prior to 11:00 p.m. and notified Verizon. By 11:15 p.m., Verizon had placed all the trunks back into service.
Similarly, eight of the ten trunks that serve wireless calls for the Prince George's County PSAP were taken out of service automatically by Verizon on
January 26 by approximately 8:30 p.m. A ninth trunk was taken out shortly thereafter. Four were restored by 10:30 p.m.; all trunks were finally restored by
approximately 11:00 p.m.
It is not clear what caused these individual trunks to be taken out of service. Your experts have postulated that the increased call volume resulting
from the snowstorm created a timing problem on the trunks which caused them to be automatically taken out of service. However, the Private Branch Exchange
(PBX) in the Montgomery County PSAP is a relatively new CS1000E, which has the speed and capacity to handle the number of calls that were being routed.
The Prince George's County PSAP's PBX is older, but since the PBX has fewer trunks connected to it, the PBX should be able handle the call volume. The slow
response of the PBX's does not appear to be the cause of the failures.
I would note that the events of January 26 are not unique and that other similar 9-1-1 outages have occurred recently in the region. On December 17th,
2010, the Prince George's County PSAP and on July 25, 2010, the Montgomery County PSAP exper
They're old, they should have figured shit out by now, if not then oh well.
You, sir, are an asshole.
Posting anonymously as I actually work in the E911 industry and have some insight on 911 calls in general..
Most people don't realize this but most 911 call centers (PSAPs or Public Safety Answering Point) only have at MOST 15 wireless trunks and 30 landline trunks. Those are the HUGE regional response centers that handle calls from multiple counties/cities and there are only a few PSAPs that are this large in the country. Most PSAPs have fewer than 15 trunks in total and of those maybe 5 are wireless trunks. In the case of a widespread natural disaster, it doesn't matter if you have a landline or wireless, there simply aren't enough lines going into that location to handle all of the calls. If you get through to emergency responders then you are lucky.
Think of it like this, it is a DDOS perpetrated by significant weather events. This investigation is well and good, but all they are going to discover is that you can't build enough infrastructure affordably to handle the traffic in an event like this. on-demand availability won't solve it either because you are still personnel limited at the other end.
Bottom line, if you are relying on the government for your safety you are deluded into thinking they can really do anything in the immediate timeframe following a natural disaster. Your best bet is to be prepared to fend for yourself for at least 48 hours, preferably 7 days.