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.

Comments

Thursday?

[nwaack]

Ummm...it's still out for certain cell phone carriers here in Wisconsin.

Improper Centralization of Services

[mysidia]

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.