AT&T Slammed $5.25 Million Fine for Emergency Call Outage

AT & T To Pay $5.25 Million

AT&T Inc and a federal regulator stated on Thursday that the telecom company had been ordered to pay $5.25 million fine. The fine is reportedly for the settlement of a U.S. investigation after two outages of the telecom network in 2017 prevented about 15,000 callers from making emergency 911 calls.

The Federal Communications Commission stated on Thursday that AT&T already consented to make reasonable alterations that would reduce the likelihood and impact of any subsequent 911 outages, and also make improvements on the notification of 911 call centers whenever such outages occurred. According to the telecom company, it had taken reasonable steps to prevent such from happening again. The company expressed that it had cooperated with the review and was fully aware that providing access to 911 services is extremely important.

As stated by the FCC,  what caused the 911 service outages were planned modifications in VoLTE network implemented by AT&T, but which led to interference with its ability to route 911 calls during the period.  Reports indicated that the outage in March 2017 was for about five hours and caused about 12,000 unique users’ failed 911 calls, while the outage which occurred two months later went on for about 47 minutes and caused 2,600 failed 911 calls.

The FCC reportedly stated during the March outage that AT&T was unable to give a quick, clear and full notification to all 911 call centers that were affected. This failure was contrary to Federal regulations stipulating that cellular providers are required to transmit every 911 call, and also inform call centers in any case when an outage would last for at least 30 minutes.

The March 2017 power outage lasted for about five hours and caused about 12,000 failed 911 calls while the outage in May 2017 caused 2,600 failed emergency calls

The FCC in a statement explicitly stated that preventable outages were not acceptable and emphasized as a national priority the importance of having a strong and reliable 911 service as a national priority.

Additional Measures

Media outlets reported that in addition to the fine, AT&T has also been ordered to carry out implementations of system changes for reduction of any such call outage occurring in the future. The company is also expected to make improvements on its internal practices for the notification of 911 call centers whenever they had a problem, while also improving the period it takes to complete emergency calls. AT&T is also required to file compliance reports with the FCC regularly.

AT&T has been ordered to implement system changes for reduction of future occurrences of call outage and the impact of such

In a statement to a media outlet, AT&T stated that the company understood the importance of emergency services and gave full cooperation to the FCC during the review. The company also noted that network changes caused the events and they had taken adequate step to prevent future occurrence of such.

Sources claimed that the $5.25 million to be paid by AT&T is a relatively small fine as the company generated revenue of $190 billion in 2017 and made revenue of $38 billion in its last reported quarter before its acquisition of Time Warner. However, sources claimed that the primary purpose of the fine wasn’t for the amount itself, but to serve as a reminder that emergency 911 calls are very critical and outages are never acceptable.  Even though outages are bound to happen sometimes, there are processes to follow to mitigate such outages, and their effects and the fine imposed on AT&T was because it failed to adhere to those processes.

Other Network Outages

Media outlets reported that several other carriers also agreed to series of settlements following an outage in April 2014 which affected 11 million phone users. Sources stated that Verizon Communications Inc. agreed to pay a fine of $3.4 million after it had an outage of six hours in April 2014 which affected approximately 750,000 wireless users in about nine different counties of California.

Sources also reported that CenturyLink Inc. agreed to make a settlement of $16 million in the same April outage. The FCC stated that the April 2014 outages resulted in about 6,600 missed 911 calls bordering on assault, a heart attack, a drug overdose, assault, domestic violence, motor vehicle accidents and a residential break-in by an intruder. The FCC recorded that the outage was caused by an error in software coding at a Colorado-call management center which could have been prevented.

Sources also reported that in 2015, T Mobile US agreed to make a $17.5 million settlement after two nationwide 911 service outages in August 2014. Sources alleged that the independent but related outages lasted for about three hours and its effect was felt by nearly all the carrier’s 50 million customers at that period.