CenturyLink & West Safety Communications Agree to Pay $575,000 for Multi-State 911 Outage in Aug 2018

The Federal Communications Commission announced settlements with CenturyLink and West Safety Communications to conclude investigations into violations of FCC rules in connection with a multi-state 911 outage that took place on Aug 1, 2018. CenturyLink and West Safety Communications have agreed to pay $400,000 and $175,000, respectively, and committed to implement a compliance plan to help ensure the integrity and reliability of the nation’s 911network. On Aug 1, 2018, a West Safety Services technician mistakenly made a configuration change to the West Safety Service 911 routing network, resulting in the failure of CenturyLink and West Safety Communications to route 911 calls to dozens of 911 call centers in multiple states. The 911 outage lasted 65 minutes and led to many 911 calls failing to reach emergency operators. For instance, in Minnesota alone, CenturyLink failed to deliver 693 emergency calls to approximately 70 public safety call centers.