ORLANDO, Fla. – A week after an AT&T 911 outage in Orange County, Mayor Teresa Jacobs is asking the Federal Communications Commission to investigate not only the root of the outage but also to review the company’s “failure to alert its customers.”
Jacobs wrote a letter Monday to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who is currently investigating the national outage, saying that AT&T did not notify its customers and government officials.
Officials in Orange County first became aware of the problem on March 8 when firefighters responded to a house alarm. A person in the home was having a medical emergency and the family was forced to activate its home security system when they couldn't get through to 911.
Orange County fire Chief Otto Drozd said about 172 calls came through to the alternate number during the outage, and 911 operators received calls from people who called on behalf of people who were unable to get through.
“We did not learn of the malfunction from AT&T,” the mayor said in her letter.
Hours after the outage began, Jacobs said the county received an email from AT&T, "containing no working contact information or outage details” and instructions to call during “business hours” for more information.
Jacobs said that in case of a similar incident in the future, she would like carriers to notify their customers with a text message or alert, similar to the Amber Alert notification system.
“If AT&T is able to send a courtesy text message to customers when their data plan is reaching its limit, (it) should be obligated to notify customers and public safety partners immediately when access to 911 has been compromised,” Jacobs wrote.
Jacobs stressed the importance of 911 communications during the Pulse shooting last June 12 when trapped victims spent hours hiding giving crucial information to dispatchers and law enforcement officers.
She wrote that a 911 caller led to the end of a more than 3-hour stand off with gunman Omar Mateen. A caller hiding in the club was able to provide information about the gunman’s location that helped Orlando SWAT end the standoff.
“If that one cellular phone had been unable to successfully connect with a 911 operator, the trauma and loss of life would almost certainly have been even greater,” Jacobs said.
Pai said last week that the FCC is committed to finding the root of the problem.
“I immediately directed FCC staff to contact AT&T about it and the company’s efforts to restore access to emergency services to the American public,” Pai said the day after the outage. “I also spoke with Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive officer, and stressed the urgent need to restore service and to communicate with first responders, as well as AT&T customers, about the status of operations."
Orange County public information Officer Carrie Proudfit said Tuesday that the FCC responded to Jacob's letter and indicated they would like to meet with local officials soon.
Various law enforcement agencies in Central Florida provided backup emergency phone numbers on the night of the outage when some AT&T customers could not call 911. Multiple Central Florida counties were affected. The issue also affected parts of Texas, Georgia, Tennessee and Washington, D.C.
AT&T has 147 million wireless customers in the U.S. and Mexico, according to its website.
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