If T-Mobile’s giant outage affected you, now’s your chance to tell the FCC

Enlarge / A pigeon rests on a T-Mobile logo outside a mobile phone store, operated by Deutsche Telekom AG, in Munich, Germany, on Monday, Feb. 6, 2017. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

The Federal Communications Commission is kicking off its investigation of last week's T-Mobile outage by seeking public comment. Government agencies, public safety entities, businesses, and individuals are encouraged to submit comments about their experiences during the 13-hour outage.

"We seek comment on the impact of these outages from the perspective of affected public safety entities, as well as state and local governments," the FCC said in a public notice today. "Are there estimates of how many calls, including 911 calls, failed or otherwise affected by the outage? What was the effect of the outage on public safety activities and government services across the country? Was there a disruption of data services relied on by public safety entities and state and local governments?"

The outage "prevented customers from making calls, receiving calls, and in some cases, sending text messages over T-Mobile's Voice-over LTE (VoLTE) network," and social media reports indicated that 911 calling was affected, the FCC notice said. Besides government and public safety organizations, the FCC is seeking comment on "this outage's impact from the perspective of affected individual and enterprise consumers."

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