Mismatched IP Addresses Caused March AT&T Wireless 911 Outage, FCC Says
Mismatched IP addresses caused a widespread March 8 outage of 911 service that kept AT&T wireless customers from making emergency calls during five-hours (see 1703090017). FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said at the commissioners' meeting Thursday that the problem never should…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
have occurred. The FCC will release a public notice reminding carriers of best practices in the area. The Public Safety Bureau plans a workshop of consumer groups, service providers and public safety. The agency reported 12,539 Americans were affected. AT&T relies on subcontractors Comtech and West, which give it 911 call routing information, said James Wiley, Public Safety Bureau legal adviser, who presented the report. March 8, AT&T “inadvertently” broke its connection to Comtech when it initiated changes to its network, which led to a mismatch between the trusted set of IP addresses in AT&T’s network and the IP addresses Comtech used to send 911 call routing information to the carrier, Wiley said. AT&T rerouted the calls to a backup call center for manual processing, but that call center dropped most of the calls it received, Wiley said. “These findings are highly instructive,” Pai said. “This outage could have been prevented. It was the result of mistakes made by AT&T. The bureau’s report shows that there were shortfalls in operational redundancies, risk assessment, and stakeholder and consumer outreach. Had AT&T followed certain best practices as outlined by the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council, or CSRIC, this outage would have had much less impact. Indeed, the cause of the outage could and should have been identified and addressed with periodic audits.” The carrier addressed the vulnerabilities, Pai said. “I urge every carrier to address similar vulnerabilities." The company did "an extensive evaluation of this outage and concluded it was caused by a system configuration change affecting connectivity between a 911 vendor and our network," a spokesman said. "We’ve taken steps to prevent this from happening again." Public Knowledge had called for audits, said Senior Vice President Harold Feld. "Who recommended stuff like that?” Feld tweeted. “@publicknowledge. Who voted against and called us chicken little? @AjitPaiFCC.”