FCC Investigates Nationwide Emergency Services Outage For AT&T Wireless Customers

The FCC is beginning an investigation into a nationwide 911 service outage for AT&T wireless customers according to chairman Ajit Pai.

NBC News reports that following the nationwide outage of 911 service for wireless customers of AT&T, the FCC will begin an investigation into the outage. NBC states that an AT&T representative confirmed late Wednesday night that the company was experiencing a “service issue” that had affected “some calls to 911 for wireless customers.” Minutes later AT&T tweeted that their service had been restored.

Issue has been resolved that affected some calls to 911 from wireless customers. We apologize to those who were affected.

— AT&T (@ATT) March 9, 2017

Reports of affected services came from across the country. DownDetector.com, which monitors internet traffic for errors in wireless and broadband providers, stated that most outage reports were received from New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle.

Karima Holmes, director of unified communications for the Washington, D.C. government tweeted that there was a nationwide outage for AT&T and instructed customers on how to contact 911.

https://twitter.com/OUCDirector/status/839646735207104512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, stated that the FCC’s public safety team would begin an investigation into the nationwide outage and published a full statement on the issue.

Here are steps I've taken in response to yesterday's 911 outage. FCC staff & I will be investigating cause/impact. https://t.co/vHhGB86O88 pic.twitter.com/MPgZooqtBS

— Ajit Pai (@AjitPaiFCC) March 9, 2017