AT&T’s 911 Outage: The Cost of Cutting Corners

hello everyone welcome back this is Rando geek so we have an update regarding AT&T uh not good news unfortunately it's been a lot of that with them lately link for this article can be found down below for you in the description if you would like to check it out on your own but yeah not good news they're being hit with a fine $950,000 this of course is after an outage that took place in August of last year 2023 they're saying the outage only lasted 74 minutes but there's saying that 400 people were trying to use the service and it was not fun for them it was difficult they're saying that in addition to the financial settlement AT&T will be monitored for three years to make sure it is fulfilling its emergency service provisioning responsibilities and outage notifications all right so we have a statement here from chairwoman Jessica Rosen warso from the FCC she says service providers have an obligation to transmit 911 calls and notify 911 call centers of outages in a timely manner she says that their rules are designed to protect the public and ensure the public safety officials can inform consumers of alternate ways to reach emergency services in the event of an outage all right so yeah $950,000 not the biggest F in the world but the monitoring for 3 years is something that needed to happen finally we're starting to see some who on these companies and making them liable for their actions now let's be clear for those of you that don't watch my videos don't listen to what I'm saying don't know me if you've been following you'll know that I have no problem at all with AT&T's network in fact it's one of my favorite networks out of the three so I always try to give love and respect to the network when they do something right but they've been bad lately they've been very bad when it comes to how custo you know providing that service that reliability they're not owning up to their name all right so they're letting customers down so this this is mistreatment to Loyal Wireless fans that have been rocking with them for decades some right so I've been saying something has to happen they need to you know there's got to be some kind of restructuring or something within the company because things have not been good now they're saying that the outage was caused when an TNT engineer running unscheduled maintenance shut down part of the network they're saying for normal maintenance testing would have been carried out first to see how the shutdown would affect the rest of the network this of course wasn't done since it was an improp attempt at a network fix they're saying that in keeping with many such actions by the US government agencies this is a settlement not a fine meaning that AT&T admits no guilt of course the cost is equal to less than one hour of profit according to the telco's last quarterly earnings statement making it equal to 74 minutes might have been proportional at least this of course is in addition to the outage we just talked about this one lasting hours okay and uh many people were affected by this they're saying customers in New York Houston Chicago and Charlotte North Carolina all having a problem and they're saying that it was a soft W issue we had originally gotten information that it was just iPhone users having the problem we shortly found out after that it was Android users as well so just not a good look all around for AT&T is what we're talking about and why I'm being a little bit more strict with them than I probably normally would but it's been a lot lot of outages lot of problems late to the party when it comes to communicating right you you shouldn't have to be notified by everybody else before the company that you're doing business with you're on their Network they can't pop a text to ol customer saying we're currently experiencing system outages we're doing our best to have our teams work on it and we will res you know we'll let you know when the issue has been resolved or at least we'll provide you an update as as we get one anything why can't they send out a generic message to customers all these companies have a responsibility when you pay your bill they can't wait to beg you for that money right and threaten you if you don't pay if you don't pay by this m then you're cancelled whatever they can't do that to let you know that your services down they can't pop a text out no they can't even get on X AKA Twitter fast enough to to have one of their spokespeople you know update us right it took hours hours for an update after service started coming back for a few people and after the whole entire world even local news was talking about it before they made a official statement so you know these are the types of things that I don't like like things happen it's been happening far too much and I'm glad to see that there's some kind of action they should be monitored and this is for every carrier this goes along with the uh data breaches as well if these things continue these companies need to be they need to be fine and they need to be on strict supervision they need to be micromanaged to make sure that they're getting their act together and they're doing what they're supposed to be doing because at the end of the day yeah it's just a couple hours most of us have backup lines most of us that are watching these videos have at least two phones at least right so we're not really that worried about it it's the customers that don't it's the people that carry one line pay a lot of money for like a postpaid plan over $100 a month some people the ones that really depend on it the uh First Responders the the lawyers the self-employed businessmen that actually give that number out to everyone those are the ones that are going to be pissed and those are the ones that AT&T Verizon and and uh T-Mobile have to worry about leaving their company getting rid of the service to go to someone else if they don't live up to the hype in which a customer originally signed up for now Verizon and AT&T are your probably your goto's for that you know continuous reliability so if you're someone in those professions usually you're going to find that they're using that one of those two services for their day-to-day and maybe they have maybe they have a second phone T-Mobile as like their their daily driver when when it comes to personal life family friends Etc but usually for business it's usually AT&T and Verizon so that's pretty much how they've been marketing themselves they're the reliable networks especially AT&T the plans are are pretty watered down but you're paying for that consistent reliability the name The Trusted service that you'll get with them and you know lately they've kind of been falling behind that their legacy they're not really living up to the hype so I like I said before I really hope they do better I think there needs to be some kind of restructuring within the company their spokespeople need to be updated because they're not quick enough they're not quick on their toes to get out there they need people that are fast thinkers so I don't know what that means who they need but they need people people that are are better at handling crisis situations such as massive Global outages they also need you know they need people that understand the seriousness of this maybe and they may also need to upgrade their it Department because these outages are originating from within their Tech Team so you know that's a big that's something that really needs to be looked at who's in charge managing you know those developers that are typing in codes and and making mistakes and doing system testing not the right way or not even testing at all before they send out a massive update you know all things that are not something you could you know should play around with should really be treading lightly with that kind of stuff because it affects many people and again this is this is the result right huge fines not the biggest but big fines and now they're putting being put on notice not to mention many customers are starting to feel like this company is becoming a joke as a result of that now it's not too late definitely not little restructuring they'll be back on their feet in no time living up to the hype but you know something's got to give something's got to give as always thank you guys so much for stopping by and watching and I'll catch you in the next one bye for now