FCC investigating cause of nationwide 911 outage for AT&T customers

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — A glitch in the phone system that caused 911 to be unavailable for AT&T cellular customers across Central Florida has been fixed, officials said Wednesday night.

No information on the cause of the problem was immediately available.

According to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, the outage started at about 6 p.m. and affected AT&T cellular customers in Florida, Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia, Texas and Tennessee.

Orange County firefighter engineer Matthew West said Thursday that he responded to a call where a couple had to pull their burglar alarm to call 911 because they couldn't connect with their phones, which had AT&T service.

"They showed me their phones. Indeed, nine attempts to call the dispatch center with no response. I asked them to try again, no response. (I) used my personal cellphone, it did not work also," West said.

AT&T announced the problem had been fixed just after 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, but they didn't say what caused the glitch.

The FCC announced that it's now investigating what caused the glitch.

“The FCC’s public safety professionals are on the case,” said Lisa Fowlkes, acting Chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau.  “Access to 911 emergency services is essential for all Americans, especially the most vulnerable.  We will fully investigate this outage and determine the root cause and its impact.”

Orange County Fire Chief Otto Drozd said his agency worked as quickly as possible to spread the word about the outage to AT&T customers.

During a news conference Thursday, county leaders said there was no loss of life during the 911 glitch.

Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs did not hide her disdain for the way AT&T handled the interruption with its customers.

"In a day and age we live in today, when we could have  a hostage situation, God forbid where the only person available to make a call to 911 might have a phone that's not able to dial in," Jacobs said. "Imagine if that would have been the situation last night."

Cox Media Group