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There\u2019s one phone number you should always be able to call in an emergency, but for over 12 hours in June 2020, many T-Mobile customers were unable to reach 911.<\/p>\n
That has now resulted in a $19.5 million fine for the carrier, the FCC announced<\/a> this week, for failing to connect more than 23,000 911 calls. Operators were unable to determine location or callback numbers for thousands more callers during the outage, the agency says.<\/p>\n The outage happened due to “the brief failure of a leased fiber transport link in the T-Mobile network,” and was “compounded by a temporary routing flaw in a single location and two previously undetected flaws in third-party software,” the FCC says.<\/p>\n In addition to the fine, T-Mobile must now implement a compliance plan that will have it take more proactive steps to prepare for and respond to any future outages.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the first time T-Mobile\u2019s network has had this kind of outage, though. Two outages occurred in 2014 that lasted roughly three hours, during which T-Mobile failed to connect callers with 911 emergency services. Afterward, T-Mobile reached a similar settlement with the FCC requiring a $17.5 million payment and the adoption of new compliance measures.<\/p>\n That earlier settlement required T-Mobile to improve its ability to identify and avoid risks that could lead to 911 service disruptions, a largely similar order to this 2021 consent decree.\u00a0<\/p>\n These outages aren\u2019t something other carriers are immune to, either, as Verizon faced a similar outage in 2014 and paid a $3.4 million settlement to the FCC.<\/p>\n Sign up for Race to 5G<\/strong> newsletter to get our top mobile tech stories delivered right to your inbox.<\/p>\n This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nRecommended by Our Editors<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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