AT&T Has To Settle Over Another 911 Outage, This Time For $950k
from the oh-sorry-were-you-expecting-that-to-work? dept
As a “trusted ally” in the government’s vast and unaccountable domestic surveillance programs, AT&T receives oodles of government favors. From broad and often mindless deregulation and massive deployment subsidies to $42 billion in tax breaks in exchange for doing absolutely nothing, the U.S. government adores slathering its patriotic partner with cash.
Which makes it all the more frustrating that the company can’t do basic things properly, like keep the nation’s wireless callers connected to essential 911 emergency services.
Last February, a massive outage knocked AT&T wireless services offline for large swaths of the country, blocking more than 25,000 911 calls from being completed. Then the same thing happened in April, when a massive outage caused connectivity issues across South Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, and Texas. Now AT&T’s been fined $950,000 by the FCC for yet another 911 outage, this one from last April:
The FCC today announced a $950,000 settlement with AT&T to resolve an Enforcement Bureau investigation into whether the company violated FCC rules by failing to deliver 911 calls to, and failing to timely notify, 911 call centers in connection with an outage AT&T experienced on August 22, 2023, in parts of Illinois, Kansas, Texas, and Wisconsin.
AT&T, for what it’s worth, enjoys revenues of around $34 billion each quarter. This outage last year was apparently caused by an independent contractor that “inadvertently disabled a portion of the network” during unscheduled testing that didn’t adhere to existing protocols.
Keep in mind these outages are happening simultaneously with a series of hacks that have compromised the data of more than 73 million of its customers. And it comes as the company’s lobbyists work tirelessly to dismantle both federal and state oversight of telecom giants, including a recent Supreme Court Chevron decision that could ultimately destroy FCC oversight almost entirely.
At some point perhaps somebody in U.S. policy circles might be able to connect the mindless coddling of an unpopular, taxpayer money-slathered monopoly with the consistent sag in performance and network quality, but it may take another several decades of ugly hacks, financial fraud, consumer harms, or consistent 911 outages before somebody with a backbone and a brain connects the dots.
Filed Under: 911, deregulation, fcc, outage, telecom, wireless
Companies: at&t
Comments on “AT&T Has To Settle Over Another 911 Outage, This Time For $950k”
Testing in production has always been a state of the art practice to check if things may work in real life.
Also, it cuts some cost of replicating a testing environment. And in this case, it may has reducing cost by more than $1M.
Win-win!
Well, except for thousands of people that needed badly to call 911. But when industry makes one step forward, population may need to make two steps backward.
Re:
Cutting corners is bad business policy, therefore it is very common.
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Cutting corners is fantastic business policy unless you’re one of those dorks who looks beyond the next quarter.
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Ahemmmm, we like to refer to them as essential workers.
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We are indeed doing Science! to improve the lives of the ones who are Still Alive! — Black Mesa
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I still think best line in all of Half-life was,
“Aperture Science, we do what we must, because we can”.
Sadly, it was prophetic. 😐
So if I’m doing my math correctly, government really is laying smack down on ATT:
+42,000,000,000 GOVT Subsidy
– 950,000 GOVT fine
—————
41,998,050,000 Left over to ‘invest’ in exec comp packages…i mean broadband
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Sadly, you are absolutely doing the math correct. In fact, any errors would be along the lines of simply not knowing about specific kickbacks, bribes..ermm…gifts, etc.
Fuck you.. That’s the AT&T promise.
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“We don’t care, we don’t have to! We’re the phone company! ” — Ernestine (Lily Tomlin)
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That skit was from SNL, 48 years ago. In fact, it was 8 years before AT&T was forced to break up into several Baby Bells. (I had to look it up in order to get the date correct.)
The names have since changed, but overall, no matter how “The Phone Company” is structured, it’s still guilty of fucking over the public in general. It’s enough to make a grown man cry.
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That skit was from the comedy show Laugh-In, before SNL.
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The character Ernestine became prominent on on Laugh-In, but Lily reprised it on SNL. I remember that quote distinctly being in the SNL skit, and it really doesn’t make sense in the Laugh-In fare.
Fines?
Along with the above math, these fines don’t even amount to a fraction of what AT&T could find behind the proverbial couch cushions.
Re: Fines?
AT&T doesn’t have any couches anymore. JD Vance grabbed them all.
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JD put a hole in each of those couches, but surely he left them behind like everything else he’s ever pretended to care about.
The rest of us face enormous consequences when AT&T fails to do its job. A fiber cut in Mendocino County in Northern California in 2015 caused nearly all communications to be lost for around 24 hours even though they had been paid to create a redundant connection. It just wasn’t convenient, apparently, to turn it on.
Most other providers also relied on that network, and so for example ambulances could not talk to hospitals or dispatch, the sheriff’s phone service was inexplicably routed to a real estate office 200 miles away, no stores could take credit cards and no banks could dispense money.
AT&T wants to shed all of its uptime and service area regulatory obligations and pivot to the wild world of internet and cellular which are still regulated as nonessential luxuries, while still collecting all those sweet, sweet subsidizes it is used to as a landline provider.
I did work for a company that supported NextGen 911 systems like in Massachusetts and a few other states and counties.
There is a process that when an address is found to be a new service or an incoming call would have incorrect data on them from wireless callers, it was 99.9% of the time someone on AT&Ts network. It would take them YEARS to update records that should have taken less than 24hours to do. I can’t recall how many times over a period of 2022-23 that we had to reach out to AT&T to ask if they had updated a record or if they are having wireless issues and get the answer back “I dunno!” Then we would have to elevate the call to managers of managers to get things verified. We would know if there was an AT&T outage far before AT&T would.
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Oh geez yeah. i had a phone number. For 7 years caller ID displayed the last (?) person’s name. But somehow, other people would come up with other previous names for the number.
Any time someone would ask, or incorrectly call me (personally) by a name they’d gotten off the phone, i could cross-reference with the list of people i got calls/texts for.
Also pretty sure that the number wasn’t parked for any amount of time before they handed it back out to me.
'Oh noes, that's almost a rounding error on TODAY's budget...'
Remember: Any fine smaller than what a company gained from a violation isn’t a punishment, it’s a business expense, no different than renting a building or paying your electric bill.
now, DELICATELY apply Feather repeatedly,...
“FCC announced a $950,000 settlement with AT&T;”
or, rephrased:
‘Chastises with a Feather their little Pinky Finger.’
phew!
now THAT! will teach them!!
Also, exactly how will there be ANY change when it is the ATT Customers that are paying for ATT’s screw-up? (knowing full-well, ATT will gleefully pass any financial ‘judgements’ right onto their customers, thus, affecting NOTHING.)
So.
Seriously:
HOW many more millions need to literally(or figuratively)DIE in these various aspects of petulant selfish childishness before there is some semblance of Justice??
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Re: partly unlikely
No doubt it will get passed along. But it affects things.
Utilities are generally regulated on a rate-of-return basis. However much it costs to operate, add a certain percentage and rate it out over the customer base. That means that the company makes an additional profit, being the regulated rate of return percentage of $950000.00, which I suppose might be seen as a sort of punishment by people who do not pay attention.