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Investigation Launches Over 911 Blackout

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is launching an investigation after 911 emergency services were temporarily unavailable Wednesday for AT&T customers in some of the biggest cities in the U.S.

We’re receiving reports of widespread AT&T 911 call outages. @FCC public safety staff are investigating. I’ll post more info once available.

— Ajit Pai (@AjitPaiFCC) March 9, 2017

While the outage reportedly only lasted an hour or so, police and fire departments across the country were forced to use Twitter to advise affected AT&T users call mainline non-emergency phone numbers.

The Arlington, Texas Fire Department even noted it wasn’t able to automatically identify the location of the caller as usual.

@ArlingtonTxFire: our ability to see the location of a 9-1-1 caller is not available on the non-emergency line, so please give your address

— Arlington Fire Dept. (@ArlingtonTxFire) March 9, 2017

Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., New York City, Phoenix, Seattle, Miami, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and several other major cities had the most reports of outages, according to DownDetector, a website that tracks internet traffic on wireless and broadband carriers.

It is not yet known, though, how many AT&T customers were impacted.

.@FCC AT&T has reported to me that 911 service is now restored. The @FCC will investigate the root cause of the outage and its impact.

— Ajit Pai (@AjitPaiFCC) March 9, 2017

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said that he was in contact with AT&T, and announced the restoration of 911 services Wednesday night.

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