Verizon to Pay $1M Penalty Due to 2022 Outage That Blocked 911 Calls in SE

Verizon Wireless has agreed to pay a $1 million penalty levied by the Federal Communications Commission after a 2022 service outage left people across the Southeast unable to call 911.

“Today’s action is part of the FCC’s ongoing effort to ensure that the public has reliable communications, including access to 911,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement Tuesday.

The cell phone service provider experienced one outage in October 2022 and took action to prevent similar problems. But some failures recurred, resulting in an 104-minute outage for many customers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, the FCC said.

“Sunny day outages, as occurred here, can be especially troubling because they occur when the public and 911 call centers least expect it,” said Loyaan Egal, chief of the FCC Enforcement Bureau.

A consent decree explained that an investigation found that the outage resulted after a Verizon employee reapplied a security policy that had a known flaw in it.

“Due to insufficient naming convention protocols and a failure to follow then-current implementation protocols, the flawed security policy update file was reintroduced into the Verizon Wireless network,” the decree notes.

Despite Verizon knowing that the flawed security policy update file resulted in the prior outage, “Verizon Wireless did not remove that security policy update file from the inventory of available security policies, which enabled personnel to select and reapply the flawed security policy update file to the Verizon Wireless network.”

Verizon has now agreed to update its security policies and to implement a robust compliance plan to follow best practices and help prevent future outages.

The penalty came less than a year after Verizon Business Network Services agreed to pay more than $4 million over allegations that it had failed to implement sufficient cybersecurity controls for federal agencies.