The Nebraska Public Service Commission has opened separate investigations into why backup procedures failed to work when two separate incidents 2 days apart 2 weeks ago knocked out nearly all the emergency 911 networks across the state.
39 of the 68 Public Safety Answering Points or 911 centers across the state served by telecommunication carrier Lumen, including the Chadron-Dawes County center, went down on August 31 while all the centers in southeast Nebraska served by Windstream shut down Sept 2.
PUC Chair Dan Watermeier says“The disruptions in 911 service that occurred in these two separate incidents is unacceptable (because) the Commission expects 911 service providers to maintain diverse and redundant connections between the centers and their networks.”
Lumen says its outage was the result of 2 different cuts to its fiber optic network in Omah while Windstream suffered a fire at one of its switch centers that knocked out service to all the centers it serves in 11 southeast Nebraska counties.
In both investigations the PUC wants an explanation as to why the redundancy required of both telecommunications carriers failed, and it wants a solution to prevent this from happening again.
Watermeier says “The highest level of service is expected and required of our 911 service providers. There are no exceptions.”
It’s likely the Nebraska legislature will also look into the issue. State Senator Mike Moser of Columbus, chair of the Transportation and Telecommunications Committee, said after the outages that lawmakers will try to find out if state laws need to be changed to avoid such outages in the future.