Verizon Wireless has agreed to pay a $1,050,000 penalty to the US Treasury as part of a settlement with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) following a 911 outage in December 2022. The outage, which lasted for one hour and 44 minutes, affected emergency services in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. According to the FCC announcement, the issue was caused by the reapplication of a known flawed security policy update file.
The FCC emphasized the gravity of such outages, with Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal noting that “sunny day outages” can be particularly concerning as they occur unexpectedly. The consent decree reveals that the same flawed update file was also the cause of a previous outage in October 2022.
The December outage was reportedly due to a Verizon Wireless employee reapplying the flawed update file, which had not been removed from the inventory of available security policies despite its involvement in the previous outage. Additionally, Verizon admitted to failures in following standard operating and implementation procedures that would have provided additional oversight.
Under the compliance plan, Verizon will implement processes to prevent similar issues, including enhanced procedures for security policy updates, pre-change testing, risk assessments, and employee training. The carrier is required to file four compliance reports over the next three years and report any material noncompliance with 911 rules and the consent decree terms.
In its statement, Verizon described the December 2022 outage as “a highly unusual occurrence” and underscored its commitment to maintaining a reliable 911 network. Verizon must pay the $1.05 million fine within 30 days.
Verizon’s wireless service revenue for the first quarter of 2024 was $19.5 billion, with the company’s quarterly operating revenue reported at $33 billion and net income at $4.7 billion. The settlement comes as other carriers like AT&T also face scrutiny for outages linked to faulty updates. In February 2024, an AT&T wireless outage led to warnings of potential 911 disruptions, and the FCC is currently investigating that incident as well. Similarly, a recent 911 outage in Massachusetts was attributed to a faulty firewall used by the state’s 911 vendor.