Minnesota PUC Requires More Reports After 'Gigantic' CenturyLink 911 Failure

to connect. “There was a gigantic failure here on the part of CenturyLink or their contractor for” the 911 outage, said Chairman Katie Sieben at the webcast meeting. “We are getting at a good solution so that there can be a reasonable expectation that this will not happen again, and if it does happen again, consumers and the appropriate agencies will be notified in a much more timely fashion.” The order requires meetings with the Department of Public Service and six monthly progress reports. The state Public Service and Commerce departments found the telco “did not provide safe and adequate service,” said a June 5 briefing paper in docket 18-542. “A redundant selective router failed to pass on 9-1-1 calls due to the ‘routine’ provisioning of a worker. The outage was due to human error, and there were no alarm and notification systems in place that would detect this outage.” The company agreed to meetings and reports but disagreed with providing reports on outages outside 911 that prevent customers from calling the number, the paper said. “CenturyLink places a high priority on public safety" and took "several steps to address this issue" of "software updates, instituting additional monitoring and alarms, taking steps to better isolate problems more quickly and implementing enhanced test calls," a spokesperson emailed us. It's meeting with the Emergency Communications Network and Metropolitan Emergency Services Board regularly "to ensure lines of communication stay open and that we are quickly addressing any concerns," she added.