"Service providers have an obligation to transmit 911 calls and notify 911 call centers of outages in a timely manner," declared FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. "Our rules are designed to protect the public and ensure that public safety officials can inform consumers of alternate ways to reach emergency services in the event of an outage."
The outage was caused when an AT&T engineer running unscheduled maintenance shut down part of the network. For normal maintenance, testing would have been carried out first - to see how the shutdown would affect the rest of the network. This wasn't done since it was an impromptu attempt at a network fix.
In keeping with many such actions by US government agencies, this is a settlement, not a fine - meaning AT&T admits no guilt. The cost is equal to less than one hour of profit, according to the telco's last quarterly earnings statement.
Within hours of the deal with the FCC being announced, AT&T suffered another 911 outage - this one lasting a couple of hours in New York, Houston, Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina. The telco claimed the problem was a software fault.
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