AT&T, Lumen, Intrado. Verizon to Pay $6M to Settle FCC 911 Outage Probes

The FCC Enforcement Bureau settled investigations into AT&T, Lumen, Intrado and Verizon 911 outages that happened last year, the agency announced Friday. The companies will pay a combined $6 million-plus in settlement payments. They will also start compliance plans, as part of the consent decrees.

“Sunny day outages can be especially troubling because they occur when the public and 911 call centers least expect it," said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. "It’s vital that phone companies prevent these outages wherever possible and provide prompt and sufficient notification to 911 call centers when they do occur.”

Lumen's "September 2020 outage was caused by a vendor’s configuration error that impacted next generation 911 services in seven states. Service was restored in just over an hour," a telco spokesperson emailed. CenturyLink, as the company was then called, "worked closely with the vendor, Intrado, to prevent the issue from recurring and cooperated fully with the FCC’s investigation," she added.

For AT&T, the "events were the result of a hardware failure and an outage in our vendor's network," emailed a spokesperson. "We have implemented plans to mitigate the impacts of the hardware failure and are working with our vendor to ensure we are notified of its outages more quickly."

Intrado and Verizon didn't comment right away.