Considering the fact that 911 calls are an emergency, connecting to a 911 call center should always be a priority for wireless carriers. Because of this rule, Verizon is facing a fine for an outage in December 2022 for failing to deliver 911 calls in six states.
Big Red learned the hard way as it agreed to pay $1,050,000 as a fine for the outage that lasted one hour and 44 minutes. The wireless carrier failed to connect emergency calls in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee during the outage. As a result, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has ordered Verizon to pay the fine to the U.S. Treasury. The outage that Verizon encountered that day was due to a “flawed security policy update file.”
As reported by PhoneArena, Verizon also agreed to a compliance plan to ensure that it will be compliant with the FCC’s 911 call regulations. It’s also important to note that this was not the only incident when Verizon failed to deliver 911 calls to a call center. Prior to the December 2022 outage, the same thing happened in October 2022. Verizon promised that it would take action to fix the issue but it repeated just a couple of months after.
FCC Chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, released a statement on the matter:
"When you call 911 in an emergency, it’s critical that your call goes through. Today's action is part of the FCC's ongoing effort to ensure that the public has reliable communications, including access to 911."
Source: PhoneArena
