The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (Bureau) has opened an investigation into two recent AT&T Mobility outages. The first, which occurred on March 8, 2017, was a nationwide Voice over LTE (VoLTE) 911 outage affecting AT&T subscribers in localities nationwide. The second, which occurred on March 11, 2017, was a VoLTE service outage affecting AT&T subscribers in several states. To help inform its investigation, the Bureau has opened a public docket and has invited interested parties to provide information on the causes, effects, and implications of either outage. In particular, the Bureau seeks comment on the impact of these outages from the perspective of affected public safety entities, state and local governments, and consumers. The Bureau also seeks comment on the flow of information during these outages and the extent to which stakeholders had adequate awareness and resources to continue operations. In the past, the FCC has imposed fines on other carriers for 911 outages that it deemed preventable, and has mandated steps to prevent further outages. Comments on the AT&T outages are due April 7, 2017, and may be filed using the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS).
