AT&T failed to notify emergency call centers of the outage and will now pay $950,000 to settle the investigation

AT&T agreed to pay a $950,000 fine for an August 2023 outage in four states where the carrier failed to deliver 911 calls and failed to notify eight 911 call centers of the outage in a timely manner. “As part of the settlement, AT&T will implement a three-year compliance plan designed to ensure future compliance with the FCC's 911 and outage notification rules,” the Federal Communications Commission said in a press release yesterday.

The 2023 outage lasted 1 hour and 14 minutes and affected users in Illinois, Kansas, Texas and Wisconsin, resulting in over 400 failed emergency calls.

“The 911 outage occurred during testing of portions of AT&T's 911 network,” the FCC said. “During the test, a technician from an AT&T contractor inadvertently disabled a portion of the network, and AT&T's system did not automatically adjust to the disabled portion of the network, resulting in the outage. The test was not associated with any planned maintenance and therefore was not subject to the rigorous technical review that would otherwise have been performed.”

There were 315 PSAPs that needed to be notified of the outage. “AT&T provided timely notice of the 911 outage to 307 of the 315 potentially affected PSAPs. However, AT&T did not provide timely notice to eight potentially affected PSAPs,” according to a settlement agreement that AT&T agreed to. AT&T acknowledged in the agreement “that it is responsible for compliance with applicable regulations, regardless of any alleged failures of its contractor.”

Notifying all call centers of an outage is important because “a call center can then notify the public of the outage and provide information about alternative ways to obtain emergency assistance, such as calling the dispatch center at a 10-digit number or sending a text message to 911,” the FCC said.

There could be a higher penalty

AT&T could face another fine for a more recent and far more serious outage in February 2024. The February 2024 outage was caused by a botched update that disconnected all user devices from the network and blocked over 92 million phone calls, including over 25,000 attempts to reach 911.

The FCC issued a report last month criticizing AT&T for failing to follow best practices that require that “network changes be thoroughly tested, reviewed and approved before they are implemented.” The FCC's Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security has referred the matter to the agency's Enforcement Bureau because of possible violations of FCC rules.

AT&T has already made some changes in response to the February 2024 outages. AT&T is now “scanning the network for network elements that lack the controls that would have prevented the outage,” and it “has implemented additional peer review steps and established procedures to ensure that maintenance cannot be performed without confirmation that the required peer reviews have been completed,” the FCC's July 2024 report said.

These changes were independent of the compliance plan in the newly announced August 2023 outage settlement. The compliance plan includes updates to PSAP notification procedures, enhanced monitoring after network changes, enhanced testing during and outside maintenance windows, risk assessments, and compliance training for employees.