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FCC Investigating Coast-To-Coast 911 Outage For AT&T Wireless Users (nbcnews.com)
AT&T says it has fixed a nationwide outage that prevented its wireless customers from making 911 emergency calls. "Service has been restored for wireless customers affected by an issue connecting to 911. We apologize to those affected," the company officials said in a statement. The outage was serious enough to gain the attention of the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, said via Twitter that they are investigating what went wrong. NBC News reports: The company didn't say how widespread the outage was, but as reports poured in from across the country, Karima Holmes, director of unified communications for the Washington, D.C., government, said her office had been "advised there is a nationwide outage for AT&T." At 10:20 p.m. ET, about 10 minutes before AT&T gave the all-clear, DownDetector, a site that monitors internet traffic for real-time information on wireless and broadband carriers, indicated that outage reports for AT&T were clustered most prominently around New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle. But emergency authorities across the country confirmed 911 outages and publicized direct police, fire and ambulance dispatch telephone numbers that AT&T customers should call in emergencies.
You mean like Windows?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
...outage reports for AT&T were clustered most prominently around New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle...
For service to be disrupted in cities all across the country in this fashion, either the 911 systems for AT&T are way too centralized to be safe, or this is a coordinated attack on several regional pieces of infrastructure at once (and it exposes a criminal lack of security I'd say). I wonder which way AT&T will want to go with this.
Look, e911 equipment is heavily subsidized by the Federal Government. It is essentially free for the operator to acquire. Likewise it's configuration is fully paid for by the Universal Service Fund charge that's tacked on to every phone bill you get.
So, it would seem that yet again we see AT&T with their trotters in the pig trough slurping down billions and billions of dollars and providing absolutely nothing they are supposed to do in order to earn those subsidies. I'm *shocked!* Shocked! that AT&T is again failing to do the most rudimentary of tasks that being a monopoly telecommunications provider is encumbered to do. This statement is a personal opinion.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
>We apologize to those affected
That is an unacceptable response to disabling emergency services through negligence.
This put peoples lives at risk and for all we know people died as a result.
I'm guessing the FCC will conclude that the federal emergency services failed and therefor should be privatized, perhaps handled by trustworthy actors such as Trump Emergency Services LLC or Exxon Mobil.
It's not going to be a monopoly or anything, it's just that they are the only two companies certified by the president to run such an important service.
Oh, and expect prices to be 'competitive'.
"Coast-to-Coast" ???
You mean ALIENS did it?
When this happened here in the D.C. area, I immediately got an SMS from the police about it,
and giving the regular non-911 number in case you needed it.
(Actually, got several of these alerts (DC-MD-VA), and also the service restoration announcement.)
No. John B. Wells was the perp.
No, Space Ghost did it.
My city runs its own POTS telephone network, and when they had a 2 hours, city-wide outage of the entire network that, of course, also happened to disable access to 911 (duh, no phone = no 911), they were fined $1.6 million by the FCC. That was $200 per capita.
So... by my calculation, AT&T ought to probably pay somewhere on the order of $20 Billion.
911 service is just another useless regulation that needs to be removed in order to allow mobile carriers to innovate. 911 services currently have a government-enforced and government-controlled monopoly on emergency-response services. The government has been undercutting the private sector in this major market for far too long, and it needs to stop. Lifting outdated regulations like mandatory 911 service opens up a market for wireless carriers to provide their own, private emergency-response services. Private companies can always deliver services in a better, cheaper way. It's time to eliminate this legacy, ineffectual, and demonstrably ineffective regulation from an industry that is barely surviving under the weight of government regulations. AT&T's outage shows just how badly this system needs to be eliminated.
Pai's investigation will certainly come to the same conclusion.
FCC now lives in the world of alternative facts
"One of the Linux servers was attacked by unknown hackers."
The 911 service really should be backed by something more reliable than the cheapest option...
Surely you mean it should be run on the most reliable OS (Linux) and subject to regular security reviews and penetration tests
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Relax guys, Windows 10 decided to do upgrades (because it's so smart, def more so than both me and you, who have only used PC's 15+yrs), it restarted itself (because of earlier mentioned superior intelligence), but then forgot to fix the 911 dialing. Could happen to anyone
You really can't test for 911 without calling. They get quite perturbed if you call and tell them your just testing.
Pai will do something about it?
I doubt that! This will be swept under rug, hands slapped, etc.
Surely you mean it should be run on the most reliable OS (BSD) and subject to regular security reviews and penetration tests
Fixed that for you, fanboy.
"His name was James Damore."
Illegally, no doubt. Like all aliens are
Fair play
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'd name OpenVMS, AS/400, and AIX as being more reliable than Linux.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
That's not the problem. The problem is for critical infrastructure you need to fail over across datacenters quickly.
When I worked for an FDIC insured bank, our network and systems were audited by the Office of Thrift Supervision.
If the federal government is subsidizing e911 - is there an agency that audits that spending and the network?
I am not certain they are connected but the timing seems suspicious.
http://www.ksby.com/story/34690973/verizon-mum-on-cause-of-911-outage
They took down our private frame relay yesterday as well. It was a busy day for them.