Outage Outrage: Pai Slams CenturyLink

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The FCC has launched an investigation into voice, video and broadband provider CenturyLink's 911 outage, and the FCC chairman is not happy.

“When an emergency strikes, it’s critical that Americans are able to use 911 to reach those who can help," said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. "The CenturyLink service outage is therefore completely unacceptable, and its breadth and duration are particularly."

At press time, CenturyLink said it was still working on the problem after initially signaling it should have been resolved earlier in the morning, informing customers in a series of tweets of ongoing issues preventing that resolution:

[embed]https://twitter.com/CenturyLink/status/1078512853664059392[/embed][embed]https://twitter.com/CenturyLink/status/1078581735942770688[/embed][embed]https://twitter.com/CenturyLink/status/1078616062747324416[/embed][embed]https://twitter.com/CenturyLink/status/1078678635387781120[/embed]

Pai said he had told the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau to launch an investigation ASAP, including the impact of the outage on other 911 service by other providers.

John Eggerton
John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.