AT&T Hit With $950,000 Fine for 2023 911 Outage

[MacRumors]

AT&T will pay a $950,000 fine for failing to notify 911 call centers about a service outage that occurred in 2023, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said this week. There was an AT&T outage in Illinois, Kansas, Texas, and Wisconsin in August 2023, and AT&T was penalized both for failing to deliver 911 calls and for not notifying call centers in a timely manner.

The outage happened when AT&T was testing its 911 network. A technician accidentally disabled a portion of the network, and AT&T's system did not adjust to accommodate the disabled part of the network. It was not part of planned maintenance, and there was no stringent technical review. During the outage period, which lasted for a little over an hour, there were more than 400 failed 911 calls.

In addition to paying a $950,000 fine, AT&T has implemented a three-year compliance plan to make sure that it does not violate the FCC's 911 and outage notification rules going forward.

Service providers like AT&T are required to let call centers know about an outage right away so that the public can be notified about alternative ways to get emergency assistance.

It's been a bad year for AT&T. In March, AT&T confirmed that a 2021 data leak included the passcodes and sensitive info from 7.6 million AT&T customers and 65.4 million former AT&T customers. AT&T claimed that the data was obtained without unauthorized access to its systems, but hackers were able to get their hands on names, addresses, birth dates, phone numbers, social security numbers, and more from customers.

In April, the company was fined over $57 million for illegally sharing customer data with third-party data aggregators, an issue that Verizon and T-Mobile also had to shell out money for.

In July, AT&T announced a second major data breach. Hackers were able to get into a cloud platform used by AT&T, and stole the records of "nearly all" of its cellular customers. The stolen data included the phone numbers of cellular and landline customers, as well as records of calls and text messages between May and October 2022.

This week, AT&T is also in mediation with the hope of solving an ongoing Communication Workers strike in the southeast, which has impacted service in some areas and involves 17,000 employees.

Article Link: AT&T Hit With $950,000 Fine for 2023 911 Outage

 

[S.B.G]

That dollar amount is barely 'the cost of doing business' for a company this size.

 

[Mazda 3s]

$950,000? Why even bother; that's nothing to AT&T.

 

[Baritone_Guy]

I guess that’ll show em, right?

 

[Robert.Walter]

I’m sure the C-suite chuckled and then lit up cigars at this “fine”.

Until fines cause denizens of C-suites to get fired or have their compensation curtailed, or they just get prosecuted from withholding investment, this scheisse will happen time and again and the C-suite will look at this as cost of doing business and price it into rates.

 

[HMI]

The medical bill for 1 person in the hospital when that happened is probably more than that

 

[samlikesmac]

Let’s also not forget when their service just went down in multiple major metros across the country. Couldn’t make calls or get any data for a whole day.

 

[goobot]

This is like giving a fine to a regular person for a penny

 

[Morod]

File under "Cost of Doing Business".

 

[dvanwinkle]

If it’s less than the cost of paying your highest paid employee, it’s not super painful.

But I do wonder what Microsoft/Crowd Strike will be hit with…

 

[now i see it]

400 911 calls in one hour in 4 states.
Scary.

 

[mansplains]

Who cares? We can get $1000 off a new iPhone with trade-in! Hooray! With affordable service from AT&T.

 

[lindros2]

and now they're having another outage.
How much of the $950k do I get?
nothing.

 

[B4U]

That is not even a slap on the wrist.
Who suffered from this outage? Consumers.
Who is paying this fine? Again, consumers.
Just sad.

 

[LlamaLarry]

Man, I first read it as $950 million which I thought "That seems pretty excessive" and then recoded it to $950K which I then thought :That seems ineffectively low".

 

[m53rd]

Didn’t they once run ads saying not to sign up for phone service from the cable company because of not being able to call 911 in an emergency??

 

[ikramerica]

AT&T will pay a $950,000 fine for failing to notify 911 call centers about a service outage that occurred in 2023, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said this week. There was an AT&T outage in Illinois, Kansas, Texas, and Wisconsin in August 2023, and AT&T was penalized both for failing to deliver 911 calls and for not notifying call centers in a timely manner.

The outage happened when AT&T was testing its 911 network. A technician accidentally disabled a portion of the network, and AT&T's system did not adjust to accommodate the disabled part of the network. It was not part of planned maintenance, and there was no stringent technical review. During the outage period, which lasted for a little over an hour, there were more than 400 failed 911 calls.

In addition to paying a $950,000 fine, AT&T has implemented a three-year compliance plan to make sure that it does not violate the FCC's 911 and outage notification rules going forward.

Service providers like AT&T are required to let call centers know about an outage right away so that the public can be notified about alternative ways to get emergency assistance.

It's been a bad year for AT&T. In March, AT&T confirmed that a 2021 data leak included the passcodes and sensitive info from 7.6 million AT&T customers and 65.4 million former AT&T customers. AT&T claimed that the data was obtained without unauthorized access to its systems, but hackers were able to get their hands on names, addresses, birth dates, phone numbers, social security numbers, and more from customers.

In April, the company was fined over $57 million for illegally sharing customer data with third-party data aggregators, an issue that Verizon and T-Mobile also had to shell out money for.

In July, AT&T announced a second major data breach. Hackers were able to get into a cloud platform used by AT&T, and stole the records of "nearly all" of its cellular customers. The stolen data included the phone numbers of cellular and landline customers, as well as records of calls and text messages between May and October 2022.

This week, AT&T is also in mediation with the hope of solving an ongoing Communication Workers strike in the southeast, which has impacted service in some areas and involves 17,000 employees.

Article Link: AT&T Hit With $950,000 Fine for 2023 911 Outage

In a statement ATT said that to pay for the fine and future compliance, which amounts to less than 1/2 a cent per subscriber, the company will be instituting a 911 compliance fee of a $0.21 per month per line of service.

 

[ikramerica]

If it’s less than the cost of paying your highest paid employee, it’s not super painful.

But I do wonder what Microsoft/Crowd Strike will be hit with…

It’s less than 1/2 cent per subscriber (pre and post paid). That will show em.

“One less ivory back scratcher.”

 

[tostatetheobvious]

If it’s less than the cost of paying your highest paid employee, it’s not super painful.

But I do wonder what Microsoft/Crowd Strike will be hit with…

Ww need to go full Dr Evil on them. $1 million dollars!

 

[Scoob Redux]

400 failed 911 calls?? The fine should've been $1M per call.

 

[Gengar]

They’re having another nationwide outage right at this very moment.

 

[Shadex05]

They’re having another nationwide outage right at this very moment.

Yup. It is down in Florida

 

[Dark_Omen]

I work with AT&T's systems everyday. It's mind boggling how poorly educated the staff who run these systems are. Something is ALWAYS broken, and the response from the IT techs just deflect you to a fix that's completely irrelevant to the actual problem.

 

[ccsicecoke]

Government just love to fine companies b/c consumers do not get any of it

 

[that_jonasw]

What’s this got to do with Apple?