The AT&T wireless outage affected at least 125 million devices and lasted over 12 hours.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Monday that a nationwide AT&T wireless outage in February blocked more than 90,000 voice calls and prevented over 25,000 calls to 911.
The FCC said in its
new report that the outage on Feb. 22 affected more than 125 million devices across the United States, Washington, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The outage also blocked devices operated by the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet).
AT&T wireless customers and other cellphone providers using or roaming on the network were without voice and 5G data services for more than 12 hours, according to the FCC report.
“When you sign up for wireless service, you expect it will be available when you need it—especially for emergencies,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a
news release. “This ’sunny day' outage prevented consumers across the country from communicating, including by blocking 911 calls, and stopped public safety personnel from using FirstNet. We take this incident seriously and are working to provide accountability for this lapse in service and prevent similar outages in the future.”
The term “sunny day” refers to outages not caused by severe weather or natural disasters.
The incident reportedly started about three minutes after the company “implemented a network change with an equipment configuration.”
The FCC said that its Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau immediately launched its investigation after the outage began.
“The Bureau finds that the extensive scope and duration of this outage was the result of several factors, including a configuration error, a lack of adherence to AT&T Mobility’s internal procedures, a lack of peer review, a failure to adequately test after installation, inadequate laboratory testing, insufficient safeguards and controls to ensure approval of changes affecting the core network, a lack of controls to mitigate the effects of the outage once it began, and a variety of system issues that prolonged the outage once the configuration error had been remedied.”
The report emphasized that the AT&T outage “highlights the need for network providers to adhere to internal procedures and industry best practices when implementing network changes.”
In February, the company said affected customers would receive a full day of credit, citing it as “the right thing to do.”
The FCC has referred the issue to its Enforcement Bureau for potential rules violations. In addition, the agency said it is separately investigating and working with law enforcement agencies on a recent customer data breach.
