T-Mobile to pay $20M after outage led to failed 911 calls
Wireless carrier T-Mobile is paying $19.5 million in a settlement with the Federal Communications Commission over a 12-hour nationwide outage in June 2020 that resulted in thousands of failed 911 calls
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Wireless carrier T-Mobile agreed to pay $19.5 million in a settlement with the Federal Communications Commission over a 12-hour nationwide outage in June 2020 that resulted in thousands of failed 911 calls.
The FCC said Tuesday that as part of the settlement, T-Mobile will also commit to improving communications of outages to emergency call centers, among other measures.
The agency said there was a “complete failure” of more than 23,000 911 calls because of the outage. There were also calls that did go through but without key information, like a callback number or location data.
The FCC's investigation said the outage began because of a failure in part of T-Mobile's network, which was made worse by routing and software errors.
The Bellevue, Washington company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is not the first time such outages have happened. T-Mobile paid a $17.5 million fine after two related nationwide service outages on the same day in August 2014.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.