T-Mobile to pay $17.5 million fine to the FCC for extended 911 outages

T-Mobile has agreed to pay the US Federal Communications Commission $17.5 million in fines. The carrier was under investigation due to two separate 911 outages on the telecommunication provider’s network on August 8, 2014.

The two separate 911 outages lasted almost three hours, preventing wireless customers from reaching first responders in the event of a tragedy. Paying the $17.5 million settles the investigation, however, T-Mobile also agreed to improve its 911 service procedures and adopt compliance measures that will follow the FCC’s 911 guidelines for better handling of an outage like this in the future.

As per the FCC:

In its investigation, the Enforcement Bureau found that T-Mobile did not provide timely notification of the August 8, 2014, outages to all affected 911 call centers, as required by FCC rules. The investigation also found that the outages would have been avoided if T-Mobile had implemented appropriate safeguards in its 911 network architecture.

This new move from T-Mobile should enable it to more quickly find and patch up risks of 911 outages and provide a better and quicker system of notifying officials and call centers about future disruptions.

In recent news, the FCC has decided to delay its decision on rules for the 600MHz wireless spectrum auction, as T-Mobile is making a big push for the FCC to reserve half of it for smaller carriers.

source: FCC

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