Certain Lubbock AT&T Customers Unable to Contact 911

On Thursday, certain phone customers of AT&T in Lubbock may have had a hard time contacting 911 operators. The problem was blamed on technical difficulties at the AT&T office on Frankford Avenue.

A press release from the Lubbock Police Department warned citizens that certain AT&T phone numbers would not be capable of calling 911 for a period of time during the day. The issue, according to the LPD, also affected texting 911. The technical issue affected most numbers with the following prefixes:

806-794

806-798

806-783

806-698

Alternative emergency numbers were given by the LPD for those affected. So far, exactly what technical problem could cause certain numbers not to be able to reach 911 was not explained in the release or by AT&T, but 911 service is said to have been restored to all numbers by 6 p.m. Thursday.

This isn’t the first time AT&T has had a 911 outage. In June, the company agreed to pay $5.25 million dollars in a settlement over a case involving two nation-wide 911 outages earlier this year. The first outage, according to The Verge, was on March 8, and lasted close to five hours. Over 12,600 callers were unable to reach 911 during that time. The second national outage was reported May 1. That outage lasted just 45 minutes and 2,600 numbers had failed 911 calls.

The Federal Communications Commission called the 911 outages “unacceptable” and said AT&T failed to “quickly, clearly, and fully notify” affected 911 call centers. AT&T released a statement after the incidents and blamed the outages on “planned network changes that inadvertently interfered with the routing of 911 calls.”