Media Contact:
Will Wiquist, 202-418-0509
Will.Wiquist@fcc.gov
For Immediate Release
FCC REACHES $17.5 MILLION SETTLEMENT WITH T-MOBILE FOR
NATIONWIDE 911 OUTAGES
New Compliance Plan Will Improve 911 Service Reliability
Washington, D.C., July 17, 2015 - The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau has
reached a $17.5 million settlement with T-Mobile, resolving an investigation into two 911 service outages
that occurred on the company's national network last year. The separate but related outages, which
together lasted approximately three hours, prevented T-Mobile customers from reaching first responders
when making wireless 911 calls. As part of the settlement, T-Mobile has agreed to strengthen its 911
service procedures and to adopt robust compliance measures to ensure that it adheres to the FCC's 911
service reliability and outage notification rules in the future.
The Commission has no higher priority than ensuring the reliability and resilience of our nations
communications networks so that consumers can reach public safety in their time of need, said FCC
Chairman Tom Wheeler. Communications providers that do not take necessary steps to ensure that
Americans can call 911 will be held to account.
Americans across the country rely upon 911 in times of critical need, said Travis LeBlanc, Chief of the
Enforcement Bureau. As the federal agency tasked with ensuring the reliability of the Nation's 911
networks, we take this responsibility seriously and will continue to work with the nation's phone carriers
to ensure that all calls for help are received by first responders and emergency personnel.
T-Mobile's network suffered two 911 outages on August 8, 2014. The outages together lasted
approximately three hours. On average, nearly 27,400 calls per hour are placed to 911 nationwide for all
providers. Both T-Mobile outages were nationwide outages, affecting almost all of T-Mobile's then 50
million customers. Simply put, a T-Mobile customer dialing 911 during these outages would not have
reached first responders.
In its investigation, the Enforcement Bureau found that T-Mobile did not provide timely notification of
the August 8, 2014, outages to all affected 911 call centers, as required by FCC rules. The investigation
also found that the outages would have been avoided if T-Mobile had implemented appropriate
safeguards in its 911 network architecture.
To resolve the Bureau's investigation, T-Mobile will pay a $17.5 million fine and has agreed to
implement a compliance program to strengthen its 911 resilience and its 911 risk management processes.
In particular, T-Mobile will develop and implement processes to:
Identify risks that could result in disruptions to 911 service;
Protect against such risks;
Detect future 911 outages;
Respond with remedial actions, including prompt notification to affected 911 call centers; and
Recover from such outages on a timely basis.
In addition, T-Mobile will maintain up-to-date contact information for 911 call centers and adopt a plan to
notify 911 call centers during outages. The consent decree also requires T-Mobile to file detailed
compliance reports with the Enforcement Bureau.
Rear Admiral (ret.) David Simpson, Chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau said, This
Consent Decree includes a commitment by T-Mobile not only to address risk of 911 service failure, but
also to improve its 911 call center reporting and its ability to recognize, respond to, and rapidly recover
from 911 disruptions.
The Commission has adopted a number of rules intended to ensure seamless, ubiquitous, and reliable 911
service nationwide. These rules include the obligation for wireless carriers to implement 911 routing and
delivery systems to ensure that 911 calls are transmitted to the appropriate 911 emergency call centers and
to notify those call centers of 911 service outages lasting longer than 30 minutes.
Today's settlement with T-Mobile represents the largest fine that the FCC has assessed against a carrier in
connection with a 911 outage and it is the fourth major enforcement action involving 911 outages that the
FCC has taken this year. In April, the FCC entered a $16 million settlement with CenturyLink and a $1.4
million settlement with Intrado Communications in connection with an April 2014 multi-state 911 outage
that lasted for over six hours. In March, the FCC settled with Verizon for $3.4 million in connection with
the same April 2014 outage.
The T-Mobile Consent Decree is available at:
https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-15-808A1.pdf
The CenturyLink, Intrado Communications, and Verizon consent decrees are available at:
https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-15-406A1.pdf
https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-15-421A1.pdf
https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-15-308A1.pdf
###
Office of Media Relations: (202) 418-0500
TTY: (888) 835-5322
Twitter: @FCC
www.fcc.gov/office-media-relations
This is an unofficial announcement of Commission action. Release of the full text of a Commission order constitutes
official action. See MCI v. FCC, 515 F 2d 385 (D.C. Cir. 1974).
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