Today, the Federal Communications Commission announced that AT&T has been forced to pay a $5.25 million fine over a pair of nationwide 911 outages which occurred early last year. The government agency called these outages “unacceptable” in its statement.
The FCC says that the first outage, which occurred on March 8, lasted five hours and affected 12,600 callers. The second, which occurred on May 1, lasted 47 minutes and dropped 2,600 911 calls.
In a statement to The Verge, the FCC emphasized that “robust and reliable 911 service is a national priority, as repeatedly expressed by both Congress and the Commission.”
In addition to these fines, AT&T is required to make changes to prevent these kinds of outages again.
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