Slashdot Mirror
FCC Says It is Investigating CenturyLink 911 Outage
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said on Friday the agency had launched an investigation into a nationwide CenturyLink outage that has affected 911 service for consumers across the country. In a statement, he said [PDF]: "When an emergency strikes, it's critical that Americans are able to use 911 to reach those who can help. The CenturyLink service outage is therefore completely unacceptable, and its breadth and duration are particularly troubling. I've directed the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau to immediately launch an investigation into the cause and impact of this outage. This inquiry will include an examination of the effect that CenturyLink's outage appears to have had on other providers' 911 services. I have also spoken with CenturyLink to underscore the urgency of restoring service immediately. We will continue to monitor this situation closely to ensure that consumers' access to 911 is restored as quickly as possible." The outage, which lasted all day Thursday and is still ongoing in certain states, knocked out 911 emergency call services in parts of western Washington state. News outlet KOMO reported that some CenturyLink customers reported receiving busy signals when dialing 911. Other areas of the country also experiencing 911 outages included parts of Missouri, Idaho and Arizona. Some ATM machines weren't working in Idaho and Montana. And additionally, Verizon said it had service interruptions in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and parts of Montana as a result of issues with CenturyLink.
I have not been able to dial 911 for months
Ummm...it's still out for certain cell phone carriers here in Wisconsin.
I think that all reasonable friends of free enterprise can agree that this was merely some 911 prioritization; which is both a celebration of the first amendment rights of CenturyLink and will assuredly encourage further investment.
"CONSUMERS"????
I thiught 911 was emergency service number for those in immediate need of assistance? What "customers"?
Sometimes ISPs have outages, seems like 911 centers should be using redundant services.
is literally run by swamp stompers educated by louisana's fine public education system. it should surprise no one if and when their services aren't functioning. it should surprise no one when their billing is fucked up, or when service or appointments are missed, when services installed don't match a work order, etc, etc. they may be smaller than the other products of the telco consolidation era, but they're at least verizon's or at&t's equal when it comes to incompetence and quality of service and support.
They just decided to make 911 the lowest priority on their network until the government pays more money to put them in the fast lane. :-P
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
Is this enough to hold the executives accountable? Can we send them to prison if people were injured as a result of being greedy and thoughtless? Centurylink does not care if you have unreliable or poor service because you only get them if you have no other options.
Telephones would always work. The central stations had battery backups, etc., and there was just a wire and some relay contacts connecting you to another phone. Today, we have fancy VOIP that doesn't work.
To have your local police, fire, and emergency service numbers someplace instead of calling 911. I called 911 the other night on people fighting in the street, they just transferred me to the city police. Shoot, I could have just called them straight up.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
Did someone decide to deploy a country wide change to the SDN configuration?
911 is a service that Has to Work --- A local outage of 911 in one market might be explainable as multiple circuit or equipment failures, but having a national outage of 911 is unacceptable.
Having a "national outage of 911" means that the system/communications paths providing City X's 911 service have been consolidated or centralized in - order to cut costs or save money by having a smaller number of shared equipment (or single point of failure) required for City Y and City Z's 911 service to function ---- Contrary to a Telecommunication provider's obligation to provide reliable 911 service, which includes protecting customer access to the local 911 PSAP against failures of equipment that aren't in the same region as the PSAP.
Then bitch about availability impacting government services and overall safety.
Is the FCC run by morons?
There was an emergency alert pushed out to cell phones on northwestern oregon saying 911 services were down. The message provided another number to call in case of emergency.
I have never understood the concept of racism. Can you explain why you feel compelled to make offensive comments about other people?
You know, inquiring minds and all that.
The sarcasm is effective here
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Just got one in RI, It truly is coast to coast.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
The Trump FCC doing a great job again. Ajit has been the best chairman ever at the FCC. Can anyone honestly to say that a Clinton-Soros run FCC would be investigated this kind of thing? Obviously not.
Huh? Did you mean that the former FCC wouldn't have investigated this or that the former FCC would not have been investigated for this?
Somehow, I don't think either are true. The FCC has a pretty dim view of 911 service outages regardless of it's political affiliation at any specific time. Republicans and Democrats both are pretty much on board for 911 service.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Dont be stupid. Democrat party is anti-american. They would celebrate 911 outage bigly.
Found libtard. Anyone who praises amazing work Trump admin continue to do is "sarcasm". Then you idiotarians wonder why Trump has huge popularity and will be reelected for life if he wants it.
For the lulz you dirty niggar.
It's called trolling. The internet is full of it. Don't feed the trolls, please.
One, CenturyLink sucks. Seriously, they are not good.
Second, if someone dies because a 911 call can't get through, does anyone from the corporation at fault go to prison?
We got a similar text message last night (western washington) and we also had emergency alerts on our TV for the same thing
doesn't take a wizard to see what's going on. be sure to thank Obama for selling you out to godless chongs
Everything the reddit threads were saying. They listed them as starting at 1:45am. I assume eastern time, since the first person to drop off on me as a result was at 00:50 pacific with their second and final dropoff at 01:37am.
If this was a broadcast storm caused by a failed software upgrade, as was described, then it was affecting and too down all systems that had the upgrade pushed to them. If all their management access was done on insufficient bandwidth links that also doubled as the routing table trunks, it is possible the routing storm blocked out management port access to the entire network, the failure of the routing tables took down the public facing network (there was some in-network access available but dns and routes outside of centurylinks networks failed, as well as multiple dhcp resets.)
Depending on their network topology and VOIP configuration, it is entirely possible the 911 system was on the flooded management lines, or had some systems that relied on external VOIP servers being available, which when failed broke 911 routing. Unless they were doing regular network 'downtime' to intentionally break sections of the network to test it, they would have never discovered these production level problems until either a software upgrade, network configuration error, or hardware failure triggered the right set of conditions.
I do however agree with the need for less centralization, more experienced network engineers, and more failure testing, even if it results in a routine period of network inaccessability or degraded performance while such testing and precautions are taken.
"Centurylink is literally run by swamp-stompers educated by Louisana's [very poor] public education system."
"They're at least Verizon's or AT&T's equal when it comes to incompetence and [lack of] quality of service and support."
In my extensive experience, that is correct. The CEO of CenturyLink does not have technical education.
Are you done sticking guns up your ass, Cletus?
That's exactly why we have cops, to deal with shit like that which affects the rest of society and isn't reasonably handled on an individual basis. I'm big, I'm mean, I can take about 95% of the population comfortably, but breaking up a fight isn't my job, and tweakers are fucking dangerous.
Wow! Youve got an active sexual imagination. Let me try one. How is this one? Licking your democrat donation envelopes must get your pecker hard? Like tasting old Hitlery's vjay? This is fun.
Ooo libtard? how original.
But, maybe you should use your time more effectively, like by going back to school.
I cannot quite figure out what you are trying to say here: "Anyone who praises amazing work Trump admin continue to do is "sarcasm"
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
This is a test of the internet kill switch system. Do not panic. This is only a test.
Racism is based on truths. Where I live its the blacks who cause the majority of the problems. It starts in school because they don't have a stable home life and the schools aren't allowed to kick them out. They are being pushed out of cities and now moving into white suburban neighborhoods and bringing crime with them. Neighborhoods that used to be Italian are now mostly black and people getting shot on a weekly basis. A hair extension store moved into an old barber shop. I keep telling my wife its time to leave.
911... particularly the Police branch is a joke
Police have ZERO duty to "Protect" and ZERO duty to "Serve".
They can literally fucking ignore your situation,
even walk away as you get murdered,
and decline to prosecute the perp.
Even the courts are now finding and upholding this.
Police work for the State and NO ONE ELSE.
It's actually obvious that you can't ***force*** them to do anything.
Unless you want to threaten them with murder too.
So...
Carry a gun.
Make sure you have a working garden hose etc ready to fight fire at all times.
Get the fuck out of your house and make friends and partners with your neighbors in such endeavours.
Then adopt Cryptocurrency and Libertarianism and FIRE the entire Police force and the State along with it.
After all, they're redundant, inefficient, and counter to your own purposes.
Here are two very good videos on why the Second Amendment exists...
(The first one is a two part series.)
Video 1: The True Meaning And Purpose Of The 2nd Amendment - Mark Passio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2efAw3Tr5Mc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vioWTwGiELo
Video 2: In Defense of The Second Amendment - Larken Rose
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp3LPtkruss
Always befriend and help defend your neighbors, they are more reliable and on your side.
Unlike the "police" who have had the "humanity" programmed out of them by the State, and who have literally no duty to either "protect" or "serve".
again, our "system"s show all the signs of brittle fragility, a hacker's delight.
The company that was so completely awful it had to change its name from Qwest.
I'm sure a full investigation will be conducted, and they'll identify deficiencies in the CenturyLink infrastructure that must be immediately fixed through a government subsidy.
...we all had to take care of ourselves for once. We survived the great 911 outage of 2018! (Well, most of us.)
Dont be stupid. Democrat party is anti-american. They would celebrate 911 outage bigly.
I totally disagree with you on this. I am a Republican, but I don't think Democrats are all just lusting for power and wrong about what they want to accomplish, at least for the rank and file members of the party. They mean well and want what's best, as they see it.
I do disagree strongly with the means by which they attempt to obtain their goals. They are too short sighted and wrong headed about how best to accomplish their goals. They tend to lead with their emotions and forget to ask "and then what happens" when they advocate their policy choices, and I feel that this puts us all to often in the land of unforeseen consequence (for them), when they refuse to listen to reasoned objections to their ideas.
I'm sure they have their issues with me and my kind too.... I just wish we could discuss it like people instead of playing the sound bite game and political gotcha.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I woke up to a text alert warning me that 911 service was down and to call direct local numbers for police and fire.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
If they are going to use it for 911 service, doesn't that make it a de factor common carrier service? Or, alternately, why the hell does a life-critical service depend on a private commercial operator, and apparently with *no redundancy*.
The 911 aspect of it seems like more a failure of the people in charge of setting up the 911 service (and putting easily and predictably failure-prone elements into it) than is of Centurylink. Just seems irresponsible.
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/252100-centurylink-accepts-more-than-500-million-to-expand-rural-internet-service
That was in 2015. Money spread over 6 years. That was in Obama admin. Trumps FCC needs to dump CTL if he wants to do the right thing and give money to rural communities who could seek better bids..at least better than CTL.
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09, 2019 @11:17PM
Class action suit to throw management out seems the only reasonable solution.