‘Light Pole Caused 911 Outages In US’
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – U.S. officials said Friday that the installation of a light pole was to blame for a mass outage across at least four states this week that disrupted the 911 emergency telephone service for hours.
“At this point, we understand that the outage affected Nevada, Texas, South Dakota, and Nebraska,” the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said in a statement.
Worthy News learned that as many as nine states may have been impacted by the outages, raising concerns about vulnerabilities of the U.S. emergency services.
The outage began late Wednesday and lasted for at least two hours in some of the states, according to the FCC and local officials.
Lumen Global Issues Director Mark Molzen said in published remarks that the states experienced outages due to a third-party company installing a light pole and said it was “unrelated to our services.”
He did not name the third party. Lumen is a telecommunications company that provides 911 service and supports other communications systems worldwide.
“We restored all services in approximately two and a half hours,” Lumen said. “Our techs identified the issue and worked hard to fix it as quickly as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate our customers’ patience and understanding.”
The FCC said it has launched an investigation.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said, “When you call 911 in an emergency, it is vital that call goes through.” She stressed that the “FCC has already begun investigating the 911 multi-state outages that occurred last night to get to the bottom of the cause and impact.”
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