FCC Issues Harsh Words, No Penalties for CenturyLink Outage

For 27 hours in December 2018, CenturyLink phone and internet customers were affected by a massive outage across their entire coverage footprint. After investigating for several months, the Federal Communications Commission has issued a report taking CenturyLink to task for the outage but without any financial penalties.

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"The outage affected communications service providers, businesses customers, and consumers who relied upon CenturyLink's transport services, which route communications traffic from various providers to locations across the country. The outage resulted in extensive disruptions to phone and broadband service, including 911 calling. As many as 22 million customers across 39 states were affected, including approximately 17 million customers across 29 states who lacked reliable access to 911. At least 886 calls to 911 were not delivered." -- FCC report on December, 2018 CenturyLink outage

FCC Charirman Ajit Pai called the outage unacceptable when it happened in December, and that criticism was reiterated in the official report. However, the FCC passed on issuing any formal punishment or financial penalty to CenturyLink, instead vowing that it will "engage in stakeholder outreach to promote bets practices and contact other major transport providers to discuss their network practices."  

To read more about the outage and the FCC's scolding, CLICK HERE to read an article at Ars Technica.