Lumen Might Have to Pay Washington State $7.2 Million for 911 Outage
Washington state will weigh a proposed $7.2 million fine for Lumen that’s more than 14 times what the company agreed to pay the FCC in a Dec. 14 settlement for a two-day 911 outage in late 2018 that affected most…
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states (see 2012140058 and 1901280023). Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission staff alleged Tuesday the company, then called CenturyLink, committed about 72,000 violations of four state laws and rules, including 24,000 for failing to transmit 911 calls and 15 for failing to promptly notify public safety answering points (PSAPs) about the outage that affected about 7.4 million state residents. The three-member state commission will schedule a hearing on staff’s recommendation, the UTC said. Staff “found that the outage was due to a preventable technical error and related deficiencies within CenturyLink’s network” and “that CenturyLink incorrectly configured network devices and did not build safeguards into their traffic routing infrastructure, significantly prolonging the outage.” The carrier didn’t provide complete failed-call data requested by the state commission, so staff averaged emergency call volumes to determine the number of possible missed or dropped calls during the outage, the UTC said. The proposed fine is “misguided and misdirected” because a third-party vendor’s faulty network equipment caused the December 2018 outage, a Lumen spokesperson emailed Wednesday. CenturyLink-served PSAPs had no failed 911 calls, she said. “Service providers that rely on CenturyLink’s network to transport their traffic, including 911, may have been impacted. If another provider's 911 service was impacted during the event, it is their responsibility, not CenturyLink’s, to ensure redundancy is built into their network.” The UTC emailed a line in the report: "Regardless of whether a PSAP was receiving service from CenturyLink or Comtech, during phase one all Washington E911 calls were dependent on West, CenturyLink’s vendor, for [automatic location identification] services and on CenturyLink for call origination services." At the time of the outage, CenturyLink managed PSAPs in some of Washington’s most populated counties, including King, Spokane and Snohomish, the report said.