AT&T Agrees to $950,000 Settlement Over 911 Outage Failure and Lack of Notification

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AT&T Inc. has agreed to pay $950,000 to settle an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which found that the telecommunications giant failed to properly handle 911 calls during an outage in August 2023. The FCC’s probe revealed that AT&T not only failed to deliver 911 calls to emergency centers but also neglected to notify officials promptly about the service disruption.

The outage, which occurred during routine testing of AT&T’s 911 network, affected emergency call services in several states, including Illinois, Kansas, Texas, and Wisconsin. According to the FCC, this incident resulted in the failure of over 400 911 calls and lasted for a duration of 1 hour and 14 minutes.

As part of the settlement agreement, AT&T has committed to implementing a comprehensive three-year plan designed to ensure compliance with the FCC’s regulations concerning 911 services and outage notifications. The plan will focus on preventing future failures and improving the company’s response to emergency call disruptions.

The FCC noted that the outage was caused by an inadvertent error by an AT&T contractor technician who disabled part of the network during testing. This testing was not related to any scheduled maintenance activities and lacked the rigorous technical review process that typically accompanies such operations. Consequently, the network’s failure to automatically adjust led to the service disruption.

In addition to the August outage, the FCC is also investigating a separate nationwide AT&T wireless outage that occurred in February, which lasted over 12 hours. This outage blocked more than 92 million voice calls and obstructed over 25,000 attempts to reach 911.

Recent similar enforcement actions include Charter Communications, which agreed to a $15 million settlement in July for non-compliance with network and 911 outage notification regulations. Additionally, Verizon Communications settled with the FCC in June for $1.05 million following a December 2022 outage that affected 911 services across six states.

The FCC’s investigation into these incidents underscores the critical importance of reliable emergency services and the need for telecommunications companies to adhere strictly to regulatory requirements.