CenturyLink suffers major network outage, taking down 911 services throughout the US

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Update: According to CenturyLink's status page, as of Friday night (Dec 28, 20:44 ET) "all consumer services impacted by this event, including voice and 911, have been restored. Some consumers may continue to experience limited latency, but those issues will clear in the next few hours."

If you've ever been in a serious emergency before, you probably already know how important it is to have quick access to emergency services. Whether you're in a car crash, a burning building, or facing a serious medical problem, the last thing you want to hear when you dial "911" is a busy signal.

Unfortunately for many Americans, that's precisely what happened beginning on Thursday. ISP CenturyLink's network recently went down in certain parts of the US (including Washington, Idaho, and Missouri) knocking out each location's 911 services in the process.

Federal Communication Commission Chairman Ajit Pai was quick to issue a statement expressing his disappointment with CenturyLink shortly after the incident went public. "When an emergency strikes, it's critical that Americans are able to use 911 to reach those who can help," Pai wrote. "The CenturyLink service outage is therefore completely unacceptable, and its breadth and duration are particularly troubling."

As of writing, CenturyLink has still failed to fully restore service to all affected regions and customers (its internet users have also been impacted), but it's making "good progress," according to the company's official Twitter account.

If you happen to live in one of the affected areas, you aren't completely out of luck in the case of an emergency. Texting 911 is one option, and many states have their own emergency service lines you can call should disaster strike. For our part, we'll update you when CenturyLink fully resolves the situation.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/78041-centurylink-suffers-major-network-outage-taking-down-911.html

 
I have gigabit fiber with CenturyLink. I still won't give it up for Crapcast.

That being said, I wonder if the internet going down together with their 911 phone lines simply because they are both on the fiber network. The reason I wonder is that CenturyLink forced me to switch from my copper lines to fiber lines when I switched to their internet service even though my copper lines are working well. In addition, they probably have been slowing switching their entire phone line infrastructure from copper lines over to fiber lines, including their 911 phone lines. Assuming their 911 phone lines are now on fiber, and also assuming that fiber phone lines aren't as reliable compared to copper lines, maybe that's why both have an outage at the same time? Basically having their 911 phone line system on the fiber network isn't a great idea?

A few weeks back, there was news about how CenturyLink was disconnecting the internet for residents in some city until they agreed to take a look at some ads, which they said they had to because of a new city/state law, which was wrong because the new law didn't tell them to disconnect customer's from the internet until they view the ads. The ads only show up on the computer. Supposedly they also disconnected the VOIP line, which makes no sense because there is a dedicated port on the ONT strictly for VOIP. So what happened to those who has no computers and are using VOIP only? They won't be able to call 911 during an emergency and since they don't have a computer, they can't view the ads first so that they can get their internet back. And they don't have a choice because CenturyLink forced them to move away from copper lines.

Maybe one day we will have an ads on the VOIP line such as, "If this is an emergency but you are still alive, you can get this incredible offer for 4 installments of $19.99. Get it now!" And until you hear this ad, you can't call anyone.

Or I'm just paranoid.
 
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Silvernine said:
I have gigabit fiber with CenturyLink. I still won't give it up for Crapcast.

That being said, I wonder if the internet going down together with their 911 phone lines simply because they are both on the fiber network. The reason I wonder is that CenturyLink forced me to switch from my copper lines to fiber lines when I switched to their internet service even though my copper lines are working well. In addition, they probably have been slowing switching their entire phone line infrastructure from copper lines over to fiber lines, including their 911 phone lines. Assuming their 911 phone lines are now on fiber, and also assuming that fiber phone lines aren't as reliable compared to copper lines, maybe that's why both have an outage at the same time? Basically having their 911 phone line system on the fiber network isn't a great idea?

A few weeks back, there was news about how CenturyLink was disconnecting the internet for residents in some city until they agreed to take a look at some ads, which they said they had to because of a new city/state law, which was wrong because the new law didn't tell them to disconnect customer's from the internet until they view the ads. The ads only show up on the computer. Supposedly they also disconnected the VOIP line, which makes no sense because there is a dedicated port on the ONT strictly for VOIP. So what happened to those who has no computers and are using VOIP only? They won't be able to call 911 during an emergency and since they don't have a computer, they can't view the ads first so that they can get their internet back. And they don't have a choice because CenturyLink forced them to move away from copper lines.

Maybe one day we will have an ads on the VOIP line such as, "If this is an emergency but you are still alive, you can get this incredible offer for 4 installments of $19.99. Get it now!" And until you hear this ad, you can't call anyone.

Or I'm just paranoid.
Click to expand...
Cox cable is also eliminating all copper land lines for residential customers, idk about businesses. I was contracted out to them last year. You would think copper would be more reliable. Even when the power goes out you can still use a landline.

I've also worked for Frontier and Century Link. Outages happen, idk if this new transition makes it worse for 911 or if this article only exists because Pai remarked on it.
 
While I agree that an investigation is needed to determine the outage cause, I don't think this immediately jumps to the level of an FCC action. Still, the need for a dependable 911 service demands better safeguards ..... strange that the 911 service didn't have duplicate levels so it wasen't entirely lost .....
 
For a service this essential, an outage that brings down 3 entire states plus more is unacceptable. Outages should be smaller, the system is poorly designed. It has to be to have gone down like this for so long.
 
treetops said:
You would think copper would be more reliable. Even when the power goes out you can still use a landline.
Click to expand...
Yes, copper could be more reliable than fiber but only if both sides of the copper connection are still powered. If only one side is it doesn't matter. As for the actual communications part of it, fiber is far more reliable than copper since you can push a signal down a fiber line with no interference whereas with copper there's a lot of it. Take a look at your typical VDSL or cable line stats, errors... errors, oh my the errors.
 
Silvernine said:
I have gigabit fiber with CenturyLink. I still won't give it up for Crapcast.

That being said, I wonder if the internet going down together with their 911 phone lines simply because they are both on the fiber network. The reason I wonder is that CenturyLink forced me to switch from my copper lines to fiber lines when I switched to their internet service even though my copper lines are working well. In addition, they probably have been slowing switching their entire phone line infrastructure from copper lines over to fiber lines, including their 911 phone lines. Assuming their 911 phone lines are now on fiber, and also assuming that fiber phone lines aren't as reliable compared to copper lines, maybe that's why both have an outage at the same time? Basically having their 911 phone line system on the fiber network isn't a great idea?

A few weeks back, there was news about how CenturyLink was disconnecting the internet for residents in some city until they agreed to take a look at some ads, which they said they had to because of a new city/state law, which was wrong because the new law didn't tell them to disconnect customer's from the internet until they view the ads. The ads only show up on the computer. Supposedly they also disconnected the VOIP line, which makes no sense because there is a dedicated port on the ONT strictly for VOIP. So what happened to those who has no computers and are using VOIP only? They won't be able to call 911 during an emergency and since they don't have a computer, they can't view the ads first so that they can get their internet back. And they don't have a choice because CenturyLink forced them to move away from copper lines.

Maybe one day we will have an ads on the VOIP line such as, "If this is an emergency but you are still alive, you can get this incredible offer for 4 installments of $19.99. Get it now!" And until you hear this ad, you can't call anyone.

Or I'm just paranoid.
Click to expand...
The phone ports on the ont are not voip.. They are still analog pots lines.
 
trparky said:
treetops said:
You would think copper would be more reliable. Even when the power goes out you can still use a landline.
Click to expand...
Yes, copper could be more reliable than fiber but only if both sides of the copper connection are still powered. If only one side is it doesn't matter. As for the actual communications part of it, fiber is far more reliable than copper since you can push a signal down a fiber line with no interference whereas with copper there's a lot of it. Take a look at your typical VDSL or cable line stats, errors... errors, oh my the errors.
Click to expand...
Copper line telephone only requires power over the line from the PBX system. Fiber can't carry power over the line, at least not that I know of. Even if you don't have telephone service, a traditional wired phone will allow you to call 911 over a copper line.
 
Danny101 said:
Copper line telephone only requires power over the line from the PBX system. Fiber can't carry power over the line, at least not that I know of. Even if you don't have telephone service, a traditional wired phone will allow you to call 911 over a copper line.
Click to expand...
Not if all you have in your home are nothing but cordless phones.
 
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