Washington State Regulator Should Fine CenturyLink $2.9 Million for April 911 Outage Actions, Staff Recommends

to reach public safety answering points, with Washington hardest hit. The FCC later found the outage occurred because of a failure at an Intrado-managed call routing center in Englewood, Colorado (see 1410170057). CenturyLink holds the contract for managing Washington’s 911 services, but contracts some 911 management functions out to Intrado. The outage was “unprecedented in both its scope and duration,” the Washington UTC staff said in a report. “Every person in Washington was affected because the ability for anyone to access 911 was almost nonexistent.” The UTC staff report estimates that CenturyLink amassed more than 11,700 violations of UTC rules during the 911 outage, most of which stem from CenturyLink’s failure to automatically re-route 911 calls and its failure to maintain and manage the technical 911 system. The staff report also faulted CenturyLink for not notifying PSAPs “promptly” about the outage. The Washington UTC staff recommended the commission require CenturyLink to make improvements to the 911 system and report to the agency annually about the results of its maintenance of the system. A CenturyLink spokeswoman blamed Intrado for the 911 outage, saying Intrado has acknowledged faults in the call routing system at its Englewood facility. CenturyLink hadn’t encountered the issue before and worked with officials to resolve the problem once it became aware of the outage, the spokeswoman said. The telco “is troubled by the punitive nature of the fine recommended by the WUTC staff,” the spokeswoman said. Intrado didn't immediately comment.