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FCC to Investigate CenturyLink Outages

A nationwide internet outage has occurred, and it is causing serious issues for CenturyLink customers. Not having internet is bad enough, but far worse is the fact that CenturyLink customers are reporting not be able to phone 911.

911 service in numerous states including Arizona, Massachusetts, Wyoming, Idaho, Missouri, Washington state and more, is either partially or fully down in parts of those states. This isn’t just an inconvenience, but also possible endangerment of customers. Some 911 services have workarounds, such as dialing their direct landline numbers, but in the event of an emergency, this isn’t as plausible an option.

CenturyLink has given a few updates on the situation, and their responses to it have not been good. The outage initially occurred some time early Thursday morning, and CenturyLink reported that they have identified the problem and that service would be up and running within 4 hours. They later stated that they have run into further issues and are working tirelessly to fix the problem. An entire day went by, and CenturyLink was being very vague, stating they were making good progress but not giving specifics or delving into what the problem actually was.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has criticized CenturyLink for the outage, the lengthy period of time CenturyLink took to fix it, and their responses to the public about it, and announced earlier today that the FCC would begin an investigation into the matter. In the official release, Ajit Pai stated “when an emergency strikes, it’s critical that Americans are able to use 911 to reach those who can help.”

This is not the first time 911 services have been down on CenturyLink’s watch. Back in August, two-thirds of 911 calls in Minnesota were dropped for a period of time. CenturyLink blamed human error on the part of an employee of West Safety Services for the problem.

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