The FCC argues that after the network downtime that occurred in March, AT&T failed to act corrective measures. The company failed to immediately notify the 911 centers regarding the service issue. In its defense, AT&T told the FCC that the service problem occurred as it was working on changing the network that was planned earlier, which affected the 911 calls.
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Apart from paying millions, the US carrier needs to introduce some changes to reduce the damage and impact in future, if a network downtime were to occur again. But the fine imposed on AT&T is less when compared to the $17.5 million that T-Mobile (TMUS) had to pay for a similar network downtime that affected 911 calls.
Early this month, a major AT&T outage has been reported in Seattle. According to GeekWire, several customers in Seattle were impacted due to this outage that lasted for more than an hour. AT&T will have to seriously implement the changes that the FCC has demanded, considering the frequent service outages.