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Widespread 911 outages hit four states Wednesday, although most were resolved by late evening
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Law enforcement officials stated there was no evidence of cyberattacks but suggested issues with wireless carriers
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T-Mobile service problems were reported in Texas, while Nebraska officials said they experienced 911 outages across all cellular carriers except T-Mobile
Widespread 911 outages were reported across four states on Wednesday, rendering millions unable to reach authorities. The outages, which hit Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota and Texas, caused significant disruptions, although most were resolved by late evening.
The Federal Communications Commission in an X post on Thursday morning said it was aware of outage reports, and it is “currently investigating.”
According to an NBC News report, law enforcement officials said there's no reason to believe that the 911 outages were caused by a cyberattack or other malicious act, but “some agencies said the issue was with wireless carriers.”
Which carrier’s customers were affected seems to have varied by location.
In Texas, Del Rio Police wrote on social media Wednesday evening the issue was "with the carrier and not the City of Del Rio systems.” Juan Hernandez, the department's communications supervisor, said Thursday morning that the issue appeared to be with T-Mobile's service.
"Anybody who is a T-Mobile customer was having problems using their phones,” Hernandez said. “It was nothing that was on our end, there was no 911 outage, it was a T-Mobile coverage outage.”
But in Nebraska, the Chase County Sheriff’s Office said “911 is down across the State of Nebraska” for all cellular carriers except T-Mobile, and landlines were able to still get through to 911.
In other states, landlines were not working, and officials urged locals to contact them through text message.
The South Dakota Department of Public Safety said Wednesday evening that “texting to 9-1-1 is operating in most locations” as an option to contact authorities, and local law enforcement agencies offered alternative phone numbers to call for first responders.
Sioux Falls Fire Assistant Chief Mike Gramlick said in a news conference Thursday that Metro Communications received 112 calls for service, which were able to come through via open line numbers and by texting 911.
Gramlick added, “To our knowledge, we have never experienced an outage of this magnitude or duration.”
In Nevada, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police urged locals to dial 911 on mobile devices, which dispatch was able to see and call back, and said calls from landlines "are NOT working at the moment."
Other Nebraska officials said that the cause of the outage had to do with a fiber cut, according to NBC’s reporting. Kathy Allen, the director of Douglas County 911, told the outlet that Lumen said “there was a fiber cut," but they did not disclose the location of the damage.
Meanwhile, an AT&T spokesperson said its network is operating normally, and “There appeared to be an issue on another carrier’s network that could have affected calls to 9-1-1.”
This outage comes less than two months after AT&T suffered from a nationwide outage that also affected customers at T-Mobile and Verizon. During that event, thousands of customers reported no connection to their service and 911 services were reportedly affected.
Network outages, whether wireline or wireless, at mobile carriers or fixed-line carriers, are likely to recur, Roy Chua, analyst at AvidThink, told Fierce Network in February. “There are so many ways for networks to fail — physical media (fiber cut), network equipment failure (despite redundancy), network software failure, human errors, automation failures, cyberattacks.”