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US Telco Fined $3 Million in Domain Renewal Blunder (bleepingcomputer.com)

Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: Sorenson Communications, a Utah-based telecommunications provider, received a whopping $3 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week for failing to renew a crucial domain name used by a part of the local 911 emergency service. The affected service was the Video Relay System (VRS), a video calling service that telecommunication firms must provide to deaf people and others people with vocal disabilities so they can make video calls to 911 services and use sign language to notify operators of an emergency or crime. According to the FCC, on June 6, Sorenson failed to notice that the domain name on which the VRS 911 service ran had expired, leading to the entire system collapsing shortly after. Utah residents with disabilities were unable to reach 911 operators for almost three days, the FCC discovered. Sorensen noticed its blunder and renewed the domain three days later, on June 8.

4 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. Re:If the registrars/hosters are liable... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It wasn't an unintended screw up. They have a responsibility to keep the service running. Not only did they fail to renew the domain registration, they failed to notice that the system was down for three days. Gross negligence is deliberate.

  2. Re:The big accountability by chill · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Word up, go find sources that aren't so biased.

    Back at you.

    "This is what we got last night: four pallets of water, three pallets of meals and 12 pallets of infant food â" which I gave them to the people of Comerio, where people are drinking off a creek," she said

    All of that was what for a city with a population of just under 400,000. She was making a point that what was getting thru was paltry compared to the need, and that further help was needed.

    Her standing in front of the pallets of aid was EXACTLY what she should have done. She was being transparent about the magnitude of the crisis versus the magnitude of what was getting thru.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/puerto-rico-crisis/san-juan-s-mayor-pleads-trump-you-are-killing-us-n806116

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  3. Re:They can't count, either. by Glarimore · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I can see why they may have made this mistake.

    Yes, 8 - 6 = 2, but we can assume that if the issue began on the 6th and was resolved on the 8th, then service was affected for three business days. I'm sure that point (business days of outage) has been made multiple times. I can imagine the author overlooking their error due to thinking, "If service was affected for three days, then the issue must not have been fixed until three days later." This is an especially easy error to make if you're leaving date or numeric placeholders in an article as you're writing it.

    Anyway, I think we should be less hard on summary and article authors for simple arithmetic errors like this (that doesn't mean editors shouldn't be doing their due diligence, though).

  4. so, these are emergency services? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why is there no standardization? why does every telco has its own names registered for services like these? It is like allowing each telco to setup its own emergency number instead of the standardized 911.

    Why not a single name, the same everywhere, that the telco can then maintain in there local DNS, and there DNS only?

    It is a critical emergency service, right? Then it is worth doing it properly.