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Feds Fine Verizon $3.4 Million Over 911 Service Outage Issues

Posted by timothy on from the can't-get-through-to-you dept.

itwbennett writes The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has fined Verizon $3.4 million over its failure to notify police and fire departments during a 911 service outage last year. Under the commission's rules, Verizon and other carriers were required to notify emergency call centers of a six-hour outage that occurred in April. The outage involved multiple carriers and affected over 11 million people in seven states.

65 comments

  1. 3.4 mill? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    That's a drop in the ocean for something as crucial and not to mention life threatening such as that.

    Just imagine a family member was having a medical emergency and they died simply because you couldn't reach emergency services in time.

    1. Re:3.4 mill? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Conversely, lives may have been saved

    2. Re:3.4 mill? by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      Because reporting the issue would have magically made them be able to reach emergency services.

    3. Re:3.4 mill? by ShaunC · · Score: 4, Informative

      In fact it might have. Reporting the issue immediately would have given the affected emergency services a chance to get the message out via television, radio, Facebook/Twitter/etc. and use the opportunity to remind the public of the non-emergency numbers. A few days ago my local PD's domestic violence hotline had some kind of outage, and a temporary backup number was all over the news right away. A 911 outage would affect a lot more people, and the sooner they know to put out the info, the better.

      --
      Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
    4. Re:3.4 mill? by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      potential harm of no import, but punishment sufficient to ensure future compliance is. Verizon pulls in over 10 billion dollars revenue a month, or $13.5 million per hour. Ineffectual feds just fined them about 15 minutes worth of revenue.

    5. Re:3.4 mill? by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      Reporting the issue immediately would have given the affected emergency services a chance to get the message out via television, radio, Facebook/Twitter/etc. and use the opportunity to remind the public of the non-emergency numbers.

      The problems started just before midnight Pacific Time on April 9 ...

      The number of people listening to the radio or watching news programs at that time of night is very low.

      Reading a list of communities and the appropriate local non-emergency numbers would take a long time in some places. And confuse a lot of people, especially sleepy ones.

      How many people follow their local cops on Twitter or Facebook? How many of them follow the PSAP, if the PSAP even has a Twitter or Facebook presence?

      And, in the long run, the people who need to call 911 probably aren't going to remember any news flashes telling them not to call 911, and a large number of them are going to call because they think there's something important that they missed. We've had the latter happen twice. The wonderful "call everyone in the city" notification system has been tested twice. Both times people got home from work, saw they got a call from the cops, either didn't listen to the message saying "this is a test" or didn't have voicemail, and they called back to see what was going on. Instant, ongoing PSAP overload.

      Or worse, you'll get people who think ahead and program the non-emergency number into their phones. Then they have an emergency and they remember that 911 might not work so they call the non-emergency number. Guess which lines get low priority when there is a crush of calls?

      Do people call the non-emergency numbers when they have an emergency? Certainly. Our local law enforcement has a stock outgoing message for all non-emergency lines: "So and so isn't available right now. If this is an emergency, hang up and dial 911." Yes, you have to tell people in an emergency that not only do they need to dial 911, but that they must first HANG UP from their call to the non-emergency numbers.

    6. Re:3.4 mill? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Am I the only one who remembers a time before 911 when you actually had to remember the phone number of your local police and fire stations?

    7. Re:3.4 mill? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course it would have. Reporting it would have given the cops time to set up emergency backup 911 service based on their Stingrays.

    8. Re:3.4 mill? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably. I only vaguely remember that and I'm an old fart. Mind, as a young sprout I was in England where we learned to dial 999* in emergencies. At least when North America adopted a similar scheme they change it to 911 so you didn't have to wait the inexorable amount of time for the dial to rotate back from 9 rather than 1 on the last two digits. (Yes, it was before touch tone was ubiquitous.)

      *Rather than the New and Improved emergency number, 0118 999 881 999 119 7253.**

      **I hate explaining jokes, but here.

  2. needs to be higher / ceo / vp jail time by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    needs to be higher / ceo / vp jail time that will stop BS like this from happening.

    1. Re:needs to be higher / ceo / vp jail time by zlives · · Score: 1

      they are only citizens when buying votes, other rules don't apply.

    2. Re:needs to be higher / ceo / vp jail time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why do you think should they go to jail? TFA says the outage was due to a coding error. Should the outage have occurred in the first place? No. Should the higher ups go to jail for it? Also no. They should be (and were) fined, and perhaps it should be more than $3.4 million, but unless it was malicious I don't see why jail time should be considered.

  3. You want to get their attention? by Lead+Butthead · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Make the fine a (large) percentage of their annual gross revenue.

    --
    ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
    1. Re:You want to get their attention? by Foxhoundz · · Score: 1

      Make the fine a (large) percentage of their annual gross revenue.

      And what makes you think Verizon would *let* you do that? The telecom industry has very, very powerful friends in the FCC and congress.

    2. Re:You want to get their attention? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah thats why the corporates stopped Title II broadband+wireless because they run the FCC

    3. Re:You want to get their attention? by sjames · · Score: 1

      We're coming up on an election year. Since a lot of politicians have been extra naughty, they're having to work hard pretending to care if the commoners live or die.

    4. Re:You want to get their attention? by techdolphin · · Score: 1

      There three other things that should be done.

      1. Do not allow the fines to be tax deductible.
      2. Do not allow the top executives to receive any bonuses.
      3. Restrict the top executives salaries to 25 times the federal minimum wage.

      The fact of the matter is that the top executives suffer no real consequences when they screw up. We need to make them pay a price when they put the public in danger.

    5. Re:You want to get their attention? by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 1

      Every other year is an 'election year'.

    6. Re:You want to get their attention? by sjames · · Score: 1

      But nobody cares about the mid-terms so it amounts to every 4.

    7. Re:You want to get their attention? by ralphsiegler · · Score: 1

      A fine 500 times as big would actually punish them and cause firings. However your #3 only shows your petty jealousy, if an executive has projects making the company hundreds of millions, why not pay them a few million? Makes sense to me.

    8. Re:You want to get their attention? by pnutjam · · Score: 1

      Why not pay the project implementer a portion of those millions? Because our system only reward the figureheads, not the doers....

      --
      Cheap storage VM.
    9. Re:You want to get their attention? by ralphsiegler · · Score: 1

      You're confused, the executive with the seven figure salary is one of the implementers, besides and above the directory, "project manager", project engineers, etc.

    10. Re:You want to get their attention? by pnutjam · · Score: 1

      In my experience, he's usually the one with the balls to say he can do it, with no idea how and no idea whether he has the resources. He then tries to line up people who can almost do it while paying almost enough to make it worth their while.

      He's basically a glorified dispatcher who has delusions of grandeur because he has his fist in the money pot.

      --
      Cheap storage VM.
  4. Unpossible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    corporates run everything no one fines them this is lies

  5. In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Verizon says, "Whatever".... Seriously, why even bother. This is a multi-BILLION dollar company. Want to hit them, how about a $3B fine?

  6. The answer is obvious by plopez · · Score: 2

    Deregulate!

    --
    putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    1. Re:The answer is obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like a plan. We don't regulate the availability of food. When was the last time you couldn't feed yourself because there was no food in stock, anywhere, for 6 hours?

    2. Re:The answer is obvious by Solandri · · Score: 1

      You do realize that Verizon, Comcast, et al have local monopolies which are government-granted? If the telecom industry was deregulated and this had happened, the Feds would've been happy to crucify Verizon to set an example for competitors. But because regulations have made them the only game in town for so many people, the Feds have no choice but to impose a fine which smarts, but won't really affect Verizon's operations. Verizon is "too big to fail" by government mandate.

    3. Re:The answer is obvious by pnutjam · · Score: 1

      HAHA.. he thinks food is unregulated...

      --
      Cheap storage VM.
  7. Not to do the Maths for you, but by rmdingler · · Score: 2
    Six hours is 25% of a single day, thus for the year, they were out of pocket six one hundredths of a percent of the time.

    I have been described as risk-averse, and I could work within those tolerances.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by nanoflower · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm sure you could but the telephone companies are held to a higher standard for 911 service. That being said the outage would not have resulted in the fines if only Verizon had notified the local fire/police offices. Sure that might take some effort but it is the least they could do while 911 service is out (one which people's lives can depend on.)

      Hell, it might have been as simple as the head offices sending out an email to the local offices telling them to call their local police/fire departments which might have entailed a little discussion and a few minutes at the computer, followed by a few minutes on the phone at the local offices. Not a lot of work to save a few million and possibly save some lives.

    2. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      POTS standard before telcos start getting in trouble is more along the lines of approx. 30 seconds a month of downtime. 6 hour period of downtime is like 70 years' worth of allowed outages when mother nature (catastrophic storms, etc) isn't to blame.

    3. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by Obfuscant · · Score: 2

      Not a lot of work to save a few million and possibly save some lives.

      How does telling the PSAP (public safety answering point) that cellular 911 service is out save lives? How does the PSAP tell people who can't call in that they can't call in?

      By the time it got to the newspapers, or the radio, it would be over.

    4. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The length of the outage is irrelevant. They're not being fined for the outage. They're being fined for failure to notify.

    5. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The thing is this article is not very fair. Verizon effected customers in this outage were a drop in the bucket of this outage and it wasn't caused by Verizon. It was caused by Intrado which currently controls most of the ALI (address relation) servers. Verizon most likely wasn't even aware of what was going on until they started getting reports from the psaps and even then most likely had no power to determine the severity of the outage.

    6. Re: Not to do the Maths for you, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      while the pots e911 architecture does vary from state to state this would have never happened with pots architecture in any state I have ever seen

    7. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by cheater512 · · Score: 2

      Which is why SLA's are usually monthly not yearly. Otherwise you could just do a 100 year SLA to get really low numbers.

      6 hours would completely smash a 99.9% SLA which should be the minimum emergency services should have.

    8. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I'm sure one person can. But a whole country can't:

      It was 6 hours, and Verizon's portion covered 750,000 people, so let's work with those numbers. On average the USA has 240,000,000 911 calls per year, so, assuming these are average US citizens:

      (750,000 affected/ 320,000,000 population) * (240,000,000 calls per year/ 365 days * 4 sets of 6 hour periods) = 385 missed calls. So maybe you can live within that tolerance, but as a society, that's lives lost due to negligence. How much would you like the government to fine the provider for missing a 911 call and then covering up the outage?

      And that's just the case that we know about - they're being fined not just for the outage, but for failing to report it.

    9. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by nanoflower · · Score: 1

      If it's caused by someone else then why isn't Intrado being fined. I'm guessing it's because Intrado is a contractor for Verizon which still leaves Verizon on the hook.

    10. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by adolf · · Score: 1

      When I was a kit, I was taught (in public school) to always call 911 for emergencies and if that didn't work, to call 0 for an operator.

      Is this most mundane of fail-safes no longer in place?

      --
      Kid-proof tablet..
    11. Re: Not to do the Maths for you, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Note the article says nothing about the other companies being fined or not fined just that Verizon settled. The outage report states that out of approx 11mil customers effected 750k were verizon. As far as Intrada being a contracter all i can say is read up on intrada. They play many roles in different places but generally when it comes to emergency services id bet contracted by the state govs for various functions

    12. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd like to see you say the same thing if your son/daughter/wife/mom/dad died because the emergency service were down for 6 hours...

      Statistics count for shit when people are dying due to the incompetence of telcos not setting up backups to ensure such a thing can NEVER happen.

    13. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They're not being fined for the outage they're being fined for not reporting it. I don't see how reporting it would save lives. If I'm on the road with no service they could report it all fucking day and it would not help me.

    14. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by mjwx · · Score: 3, Informative

      How does telling the PSAP (public safety answering point) that cellular 911 service is out save lives? How does the PSAP tell people who can't call in that they can't call in?

      It tells the local police to send out more officers on patrol, patrolling officers can be instructed to keep an eye out. Calls direct to the station will be taken more seriously.

      I'm sure the local emergency services have a contingency plan for then PSAP goes down.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    15. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, it turns out that when you report it the authorities don't just go "Gee, that's bad". They have procedures in place to cope - increased patrols, radio/TV messages. In some areas they can even redirect the entire 911 service to other locations to provide cover.

      Just because you can't think of something in 5 minutes doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

    16. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you get paid overtime for being a dicksucking shill or is working out of hours part of your regular contract?

    17. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by g0bshiTe · · Score: 1

      Sounds like the perfect excuse not to have a disaster recovery response plan in place, "well this one obscure instance the plan would be moot so why bother have one".

      --
      I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
    18. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by flamer63 · · Score: 1

      Intrado does more than ALI. If ALI is down that isn't a problem for experienced dispatchers. Call processing was down e.g. call routing and that's the equivalent of routing 9-1-1 to /dev/null. Verizon is more or less out of the 9-1-1 business except in name alone.

    19. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by operagost · · Score: 1

      Send more officers out on patrol? But they don't have enough tasers, pepper spray, and 9mm ammunition for all that!

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    20. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not a lot of work to save a few million and possibly save some lives.

      How does telling the PSAP (public safety answering point) that cellular 911 service is out save lives? How does the PSAP tell people who can't call in that they can't call in?

      By the time it got to the newspapers, or the radio, it would be over.

      The article never states if Verizon's problem was in it's Wireless network or it's Wireline network. Go carefully re-read the article at the URL listed; I did, twice.

    21. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The thing is this article is not very fair. Verizon effected customers in this outage were a drop in the bucket of this outage and it wasn't caused by Verizon. It was caused by Intrado which currently controls most of the ALI (address relation) servers. Verizon most likely wasn't even aware of what was going on until they started getting reports from the psaps and even then most likely had no power to determine the severity of the outage.

      Reference please. Please.

    22. Re:Not to do the Maths for you, but by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      It tells the local police to send out more officers on patrol,

      They already have all the available officers doing what they are supposed to be doing. It takes time to call out more. And calling out more officers does NOTHING to help people who need to call 911 know they need to call the non-emergency number.

      patrolling officers can be instructed to keep an eye out.

      Patrolling officers are already supposed to "keep an eye out". Would you suggest that they increase their "keep an eye out" by peering in citizen's windows just in case someone is having a heart attack and can't call 911 on their cell phone?

      Calls direct to the station will be taken more seriously.

      If calls "direct to the station" aren't taken seriously, the problem is not with Verizon, it is with the people who answer the non-emergency numbers. I don't know any of them who would dismiss such a call just because it came over a non-emergency line, but they MAY not answer it as quickly if they are already busy with an emergency call. That's why it is the "non-emergency line".

      I'm sure the local emergency services have a contingency plan for then PSAP goes down.

      This wasn't a case of the PSAP going down, it was a failure in a switch used by a few cellular carriers. The plan I am familiar with for the local PSAP includes routing incoming calls to neighboring PSAPs. How do you route calls that aren't going anywhere to a neighboring PSAP?

  8. Verizon should have said ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... North Korea.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  9. 2BXpected by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    9/11 was 14 years ago. And even still I don't think you should can blame anyone but them Saudis.

    1. Re:2BXpected by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know no one reads the articles, but you can't even read the summary these days? Sheesh.

  10. Woe is Verizon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whatever shall they do?

    1. Re:Woe is Verizon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whatever shall they do?

      On /. and ArsTechnica and probably elsewhere ... Verizon will NEVER EVER get any fair reporting from staff or unbiased comments from readers.

  11. What a joke by rubycodez · · Score: 1

    quarter hour's worth of revenue, not even a slap on wrist. Off by at least two orders of magnitude to make Verizon even feel it a little

  12. Comcast? by hermitdev · · Score: 1

    Is this maybe why Comcast twice inside of 3 days invoked Emergency Broadcast System tests, the latest being roughly 8:15 CDT last night? (Previous was on Sunday, both disrupted recorded/on demand programs, neither was live).

  13. 11 million people affected? by tompaulco · · Score: 1

    There are about 164,000 911 calls nationwide in a 6 hour period on average. For 7 states, that averages out to about 23,000. So what happened that there were 500 times as many 911 calls in that area as the average dictates? Or by affected, do they mean, could have been affected, if they were one of the 0.006% of the people that may have needed to call 911 at that time?
    Additionally, it is difficult to know what affected means when many areas already have hold times for 911.

    --
    If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
  14. A Slap on the Wrist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    3.4 million is pocket change. If you want to fix this, start throwing executives into the electric chair.

  15. See where Washington's priorities lie? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 2

    So Verizon gets fined $3.4M for a 911 outage that endangered some possibly significantly large number of lives. In 2011 Google paid a $500M fine for the crime of carrying advertising by Canadian pharmacies offering discounted prices to American consumers for filling their prescriptions.

    Next time you vote on the national level, keep in mind that your federal government considers the "threat" of competition undercutting the pharma lobby's price monopoly 145.35 times more of an offense than having the 911 service not work when you need it.

  16. Verizon spends more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm guessing Verizon spends more om decorating their senior executives' bathrooms.

  17. what a disapointment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    should have been 3.4 Billion!!!!

  18. Nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As usual the fine is NOTHING compared to the damage it may have cost. The federal government should be punishing these persons (corporate 'persons' as the Supreme Court ruled) seriously, not with these fines that amount to nothing at all in the grand scheme.