CenturyLink May Face $7.2 Million Fine For 2018 911 Outage

OLYMPIA, WA — CenturyLink may face a fine of $7.2 million for the 2018's two day 911 outage that left millions of Washingtonians unable to dial for emergency services.

On Dec. 27, 2018, a nationwide 911 outage left roughly 7.4 million Washington state residents unable to call 911 for nearly 50 hours. Similar outages have happened in the years since, but none have matched the scale or duration of the 2018 outage.

Since 2018, staff for the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) have been investigating the outage, and say they've uncovered 72,015 violations of four state laws. Of those, 24,000 were for failing to transmit 911 calls. Another 15 violations are for allegedly failing to notify public safety officials about the outage.

As a R, UTC staff are recommending a fine of $7.2 million for all 72,015 alleged violations.

Now that the staff has made their recommendation, the three-member UTC commission will hold a hearing to determine whether they will enforce the fine. UTC staff note that the commission is not required to follow their recommendation.

In a statement obtained by the Tacoma News Tribune, CenturyLink denies several of the charges, claiming that there were "no failed 911 calls" due to their actions, and blaming others for not ensuring there were redundancies in place to prevent the outage.

The UTC staff report, however, doesn't see it that way, placing blame directly on CenturyLink:

"UTC staff found that the outage was due to a preventable technical error and related deficiencies within CenturyLink’s network. Staff found that CenturyLink incorrectly configured network devices and did not build safeguards into their traffic routing infrastructure, significantly prolonging the outage."

Just last week the Federal Communications Commission announced they had reached a $500,000 settlement with CenturyLink for failing to take preventative measures to avoid the 2018 outage. However, Washington's UTC commission is still free to impose the new fine, should they choose to do so.

Previously CenturyLink was ordered to pay $2.8 million dollars for a 2014 911 outage that lasted six hours.