By David Shepardson
(Reuters) -A nationwide wireless outage at AT&T (NYSE:) in February that lasted more than 12 hours blocked more than 92 million voice calls and prevented more than 25,000 attempts to reach 911, according to a report released on Monday and for the was first reported by Reuters.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission report comes after a five-month investigation that led the agency to refer the matter to the Enforcement Bureau for possible violations of FCC rules, which could result in a fine.
The FCC said all voice and 5G data services for AT&T wireless customers were unavailable during the outage that affected more than 125 million devices.
Voice and 5G data services were also unavailable to customers of other wireless carriers who regularly used or roamed on AT&T’s network, and services were cut off to devices operated by First Responder Network Authority public safety users. The FCC said AT&T prioritized restoring service to first responders but did not notify these customers until three hours after it began and nearly an hour after it was restored.
The incident began after AT&T implemented a network change with an equipment configuration error, the FCC said, adding that network operators must adhere to their internal procedures and industry best practices when implementing network changes.
“We have made changes to prevent what happened in February from happening again,” AT&T said in a statement Monday. “We fell short of the standards we hold ourselves to, and we regret that we did not meet the expectations of our customers and the public safety community.”
The company said in February it would give customers a full day of service for the carrier’s outage, calling it “the right thing to do.”
The FCC has made recommendations to help prevent similar outages in the future.
“This ‘sunny day’ outage prevented consumers across the country from communicating, including by blocking 911 calls,” said FCC Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel. “We are taking this incident seriously and are doing our best to take responsibility for this service interruption and prevent similar outages in the future.”
The FCC is also investigating a massive hacking incident in April that was disclosed earlier this month and resulted in the illegal downloading of approximately 109 million AT&T customer accounts.
