The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau has announced that on April 15, 2025, service providers must comply with the FCC’s requirements for reporting service outages that impact 911 and 988 service. Specifically, originating service providers (OSPs) and covered 911 service providers must provide a 911 outage notification to a potentially affected 911 special facility as soon as possible, but no later than within 30 minutes of discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own, operate, lease, or otherwise utilize, an outage that potentially impacts a 911 special facility.
Additionally, OSPs and covered 911 service providers must exercise special diligence to identify, maintain, and, on an annual basis, confirm current contact information appropriate for 911 outage notification for each 911 special facility that serves areas that the service provider serves. Covered 988 service providers and OSPs must also report outages that potentially affect the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the Commission’s Network Outage Reporting System (NORS). Furthermore, such entities are required to directly notify the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the 988 Lifeline administrator about outages that potentially impact a 988 special facility.
