So what the hell happened to CenturyLink nationwide and to 911 service across WA, [View all]

[pnwmom]

Montana, and elsewhere? They still don't seem to be saying.

Last night, many people in WA were awakened with an emergency message telling us that the 911 system wasn't working, and if we had an emergency we should call another number. It turns out that people had had trouble getting through 911 since the afternoon, and they finally got around to telling us. Great.

From what I understand, most people have 911 service back but they're not promising that it will keep working, probably because they don't know for sure what caused the outage in the first place. Or if they do, they're not saying.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/28/18159110/centurylink-internet-911-outage-fcc-investigating

A nationwide CenturyLink outage has knocked out 911 voice calls in parts of the US and affected everything from Verizon mobile data to ATM withdrawals, lottery drawings, and hospital patient records. The downtime, which also impacts CenturyLink’s residential internet customers, began Thursday and has now stretched on for more than 24 hours.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced Friday that such a delay is “unacceptable” and said the commission is investigating the ongoing outage after reports of people getting busy signals when dialing 911. “When an emergency strikes, it’s critical that Americans are able to use 911 to reach those who can help,” Pai said. “The CenturyLink service outage is therefore completely unacceptable, and its breadth and duration are particularly troubling.” Local authorities have taken to social media to share other emergency numbers, and some are also encouraging the use of Text to 911 if voice calls are unavailable wherever someone might need help.

CenturyLink has provided few specifics on the problem. The company first acknowledged a service disruption yesterday morning, later saying that “CenturyLink engineers and technicians identified a network element that was impacting customer services and are addressing the issue in order to restore services.” On Thursday night, CenturyLink estimated that the situation would be resolved within four hours — but that didn’t pan out.

On Friday, the company offered several “we continue to make good progress” updates but little in the way of new details. Service has been restored in some areas, but customer responses on Twitter suggest that many are still waiting for things to come back online.

SNIP