FCC’s CenturyLink 911 Outage Report Reveals Tech Transition Risk

The Federal Communications Commission released a report on the 911 outage originating in CenturyLink’s network that occurred Dec 27, 2018. The findings are the latest example of the risks involved in what the FCC calls the telecom “tech transition.” The 911 outage studied in the report was what is known as a “sunny day” outage – one not caused by weather or other natural disaster. Sunny day outages have become increasingly common as the telecommunication industry has been modernizing networks to centralize certain network functionality and to rely more heavily on internet protocol communications. The FCC calls this shift the “tech transition.” And while many aspects of the transition are good, including the ability to operate networks more efficiently, there is a downside: The impact of small problems can be magnified, as occurred during the CenturyLink 911 outage.