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Several Bay Area counties in western Florida were without 911 service for several hours Wednesday after two failures at Frontier Communications left residents without any way to call for help.
There first outage began around midnight and the second started at around 10am Wednesday morning. Both outages took about two hours each to troubleshoot and repair.
Local officials criticized Frontier for service disruptions that had the potential for disaster for residents across the area.
“It’s definitely frustrating, yes,” said Jacob Saur, Manatee County Emergency Communications Center chief. “The main concern is if someone is needing help from first responders and they can’t get that help, then, we have a big problem.”
Frontier’s 911 system is supposed to run over two different networks to provide redundancy in case of an outage. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the company mistakenly connected its two networks together, with no backup workaround.
“For some reason, those two pieces were combined to one network,” said Frontier spokesperson Bob Elek. “So. when that one network was touched or impacted, it took both of them down. It took the service. The problem is a strange one. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this before unless there was massive network damage. So, it should be an easy one to repair and fix so it doesn’t happen again and we will definitely do it.”
The first outage was traced to routine network maintenance of CenturyLink/Level 3-owned equipment affected by a Florida road project near Clewiston. The second outage occurred because of a fiber cable cut.
Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan can’t believe Frontier did not have a proper contingency plan in place to deal with critical 911 service.
“There will still have to be some answers on why there was no redundancy, what type of disaster recovery program there was,” Dugan told WTVT in Tampa.
Frontier claims it is moving away from copper wire routing of 911 calls and claims it will route future 911 calls through the internet.
“Using that old technology of copper wire to route 911 calls is going to go away,” said Saur. “So, we are preparing for the future by routing 911 calls through the internet. However, it takes time to get that in place.”
WTVT in Tampa reports Frontier had no backup plan for Wednesday’s 911 outage that interrupted service in multiple counties. (2:55)
“The main concern is if someone is needing help from first responders and they can’t get that help, then, we have a big problem.”
This statement is partly wrong.. It is not that they can not get help, but more, they have to take the extra step to just look up the number for the hospital. With cell phones, and most people having the internet on them these days, that would not be hard to do.
I think you miss the point. By accepting the lucrative contract of supplying 911 service it Frontier’s responsibility to create what is called a fiber loop. What this does is creates two different paths that the 911 service can run on. On top of that it is Frontier’s responsibility to make sure a single network outage will not bring down this circuit. So they must have either a back up switch in house that can quickly be installed if need be or the loop must end at two different switches within the CO. Now if they where attempting to run… Read more »
I think you missed the whole point to my point. I never said, or even insinuated, that they did not mess up. They did, and there was no excuse for it.. but my point was, people make it sound like, “this is the only way”.. Fact is, 911 is not an “old” thing, but a “new” thing for most of the country.. In fact, in 1987, only half of the country had it. Even today, not all of the country has it.. Only 96% does.. and then when you consider that, back then, in the “even” 90’s, there was no,… Read more »
Although I can still remember my local fire and police numbers that predated 911 that I memorized when I was a kid (I am 50 years old), I would suspect most people younger than that will not have any idea what number to call. Hell, I can still remember dialing “0” to reach a local operator to connect me. If I dial “0” on a local traditional landline today, I will get an operator in Florida. On other lines, you get an automated attendant assuming you want to place a collect call. Cell phone backups are landline providers’ favorite excuse… Read more »
A little help on this, please. So, twice in 1 day, Frontier could not provide a phone connection to 911 for 1) their area copper wire/hardline customers and/or 2) their VOIP customers ????
It sounds like the entire circuit for the 911 circuit went down due to two different unrelated things. The fiber cut should of only effected the county that the fiber went to and should of been covered by a back up path unless the circuit is done in series. If that is the case then they are using a separate provider/providers to run the circuit from one CO. If it is a PRI circuit then that would be the case. What the article I believe is saying is that the 911 service should be ran using VOIP; what this does… Read more »
What EJ said.. But to put it simply, there should have been 2 lines.., kind of like the highway, with the regular land, and the express lane.. If there is an accident on either one, then they have the other to keep traffic moving on.. But in this case, they ran them both on the same line, so when one went down, both went down, since there was only one line going through. Someone cut corners by running then together, so there was no backup.. and someone cut corners, by not checking to make sure the backup was there, and… Read more »