A recently-concluded US government investigation has shed more light on the major AT&T outage that occurred on February 22, 2024 - including revealing a slightly embarassing cause.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) report highlighted the significant impact of the outage, which blocked over 92 million phone calls, including 25,000 attempts to reach 911 emergency services.
The FCC criticized AT&T for not adhering to best practices, such as thoroughly testing, reviewing and approving network changes before implementation.
FCC investigates AT&T’s February 2024 outage
The outage affected 125 million devices across all 50 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Alarmingly, it took more than 12 hours to fully resolve, leaving many without connections during peak hours.
Besides AT&T customers, customers subscribed to providers who use AT&T’s network and those using the network for roaming were also affected. The outage also disrupted public safety communications on the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet).
AT&T acknowledged the outage stemmed from an update relating to a network expansion. The configuration error occurred three minutes after a network change was implemented, causing the network to enter ‘protect mode’ and disconnect all devices.
However, the FCC has accused AT&T of deeper issues, including inadequate peer reviews, insufficient lab testing and a lack of safeguards to prevent such outages.
AT&T has taken steps to prevent future outages, however the FCC has already referred the matter to its Enforcement Bureau for potential violations of its rules. FCC Chairwoman Jessia Rosenworcel emphasized the importance of network reliability:
“When you sign-up for wireless service, you expect it will be available when you need it – especially for emergencies… We take this incident seriously and are working to provide accountability for this lapse in service and prevent similar outages in the future.”
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