T-Mobile to pay $17.5M over 911 outages

T-Mobile will pay $17.5 million for two 911 outages last year in a settlement with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency announced on Friday.

“The Commission has no higher priority than ensuring the reliability and resilience of our nation’s communications networks so that consumers can reach public safety in their time of need,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a statement. “Communications providers that do not take necessary steps to ensure that Americans can call 911 will be held to account.”

{mosads}It is the largest settlement the agency has ever reached with a carrier over a 911 outage.

“The safety of our customers is extremely important and we take the responsibility to provide reliable 911 service very seriously,” T-Mobile said in a statement. “We have made significant changes and improvements across a number of our systems since last year, and we will continue working to improve these critical systems with our partners to provide the standard of service our customers rightly expect from T-Mobile.”

The outages occurred on a Friday in August 2014 and together lasted about three hours. They were nationwide, and the FCC said that the outages meant that “a T-Mobile customer dialing 911 during these outages would not have reached first responders.” The FCC determined that the carrier didn’t properly notify customers about the outages or probably safeguard against them.

In addition to making the payment, T-Mobile will bolster its 911 infrastructure as part of the settlement. It will also work to better notify customers of future outages.

The FCC reached settlements earlier this year with three companies who were involved in an April 2014 outage. CenturyLink was required to pay $16 million, Verizon paid $3.4 million and Intrado Communications, an emergency equipment provider, paid $1.4 million. That outage lasted for more than six hours.