The Associated Press reports that “workers installing utility poles in Missouri severed fiber-optic lines” that operate the lines and “knocked out 911 phone service for emergency agencies in Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota.” A company official announced this on Thursday.
A worker installing another company's utility pole cut into Lumen Technologies' fiber-optic line Wednesday in Kansas City, Missouri, Lumen Global Issues Director Mark Molzen said in an email to The Associated Press. Ta. Service was restored within two and a half hours. There were no reports of 911 power outages in Kansas City…
In a social media post Wednesday night, the Dundee County, Nebraska, Sheriff's Office warned 911 callers that they would receive a busy signal and asked them to call a government line instead. About three hours later, authorities announced that 911 service for cellphones and landlines had been restored. Omaha and Douglas County, home to more than a quarter of Nebraska's residents, are having issues with calls from certain cell phone carriers showing up in call mapping systems but not getting through. This was the first time the authorities learned of this. Operators began calling back those who couldn't get through, and authorities contacted Lumen, who confirmed the outage.Service was restored by 4 a.m.
Kyle Kramer, technical manager for Douglas County's 911 center, said the outage highlights the potential problems of having so many calls made on the same network. “In modern society, things are becoming more and more interconnected, and whether you're using wireless devices or landline telephones, traditional old-fashioned It no longer goes through copper phone lines,” Kramer said. “Large networks typically have some sort of aggregation point, and those aggregation points can be high risk.”
Kramer said this incident, and the two 911 outages Omaha has experienced in the past year, makes him concerned that carriers are not building enough redundancy into their networks. Told.
South Dakota officials called the statewide power outage “unprecedented,” and the state Department of Public Safety reported it lasted two hours. text message Calling 911 still worked in most places, and of course people could still call local emergency services using non-emergency lines. ) The US FCC has already started an investigation.
The article states, “Ironically, this outage occurred in the midst of National Public Safety Correspondents Week.”
Thanks to longtime Slashdot reader davidwr for sharing the article.
