FCC investigating outage that prevented AT&T wireless customers from calling 911
The National Emergency Number Association (NENA)—a 911 trade organization—said its officials “are working closely with government and industry partners to understand the scope and causes” of the AT&T 911 outage.
“This significant and unfortunate outage highlights the immediate need to transition America’s 911 centers to robust and resilient ‘next-generation 911’ technology,” according to a NENA statement. “NG911 can intelligently route around outages, redirect calls to other regions or use backup facilities in ways that legacy E-911 systems cannot.”
Yesterday’s 911 outage occurred as AT&T has taken significant steps to increase its presence in the public-safety-communications arena. The carrier giant last year announced that it will deploy a nationwide Emergency Services IP networks (ESInet)—the foundational network platform that PSAPs need to migrate to next-generation 911 (NG911) technology—and plans to deploy such systems this year.
AT&T also is leading the only bidding team to be included in the “competitive range” for the high-profile FirstNet contract to build, maintain and upgrade a nationwide public-safety broadband network that is expected to provide greater levels of security and reliability—as well as first-responder prioritization—than traditional commercial systems.
The FirstNet contract is the subject of a court case that could be decided during the next week. Depending on the ruling, AT&T could be awarded the 25-year contact as early as this month, or the FirstNet procurement process could be delayed for as long as several months, according to multiple industry sources.