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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.
No, Space Ghost did it.
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 Lifting outdated regulations like mandatory 911 service opens up a market for wireless carriers to provide their own, private emergency-response services.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.