911 Emergency Response Team (Photo : Reuters)
FCC has gone even stricter this time to wireless carriers due to 911 failures. In 2014, T-Mobile was reported to have an outage on 911 service for three hours affecting 50 million customers unable to reach 911.
According to The Wall Street, the nationwide outage disclosed on Friday was the third major outage by a variety of telecom operators of the 911. This raised concerns to Federal Communications Commission saying that country's emergency response system is being useless.
In the past, connections evolved from the local network connected to copper lines making it more reliable. Nowadays, the connection were made digital through the wireless connection using internet technologies, thus affecting people from local to national, making the damage affecting from thousands to millions of customers.
According to FCC, they reached $17.5 million settlement with T-Mobile resolving the two 911 outages in 2014. The issue lasted for approximately three hours, preventing customers to reach the first response when dialing 911.
T-Mobile committed to following procedures adhering to FCC's 911 such as sending out notifications if there's any outage.
FCC said that they have no other higher priority other than ensuring the reliability and resilience of nation's communications network for public safety and emergency needs.
"Communications providers that do not take necessary steps to ensure that Americans can call 911 will be held to account," FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said.
FCC is seriously committed to ensuring that all Americans across the country can rely in 911 in times of critical needs. Many are hopeful that T-Mobile's outage in 2014 will no longer happens. Wireless communication tends to boost connectivity and not to stop anyone from getting the emergency assistance during the emergency needs.
