T-Mobile’s outage yesterday was so big that even Ajit Pai is mad

Enlarge / The logo of Deutsche Telekom, owner of T-Mobile, seen at Mobile World Congress in February 2019 in Barcelona, Spain. (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

T-Mobile's network suffered an outage across the US yesterday, and the Federal Communications Commission is investigating.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who takes an extremely hands-off approach to regulating telecom companies, used his Twitter account to say, "The T-Mobile network outage is unacceptable" and that "the FCC is launching an investigation. We're demanding answers-and so are American consumers."

No matter what the investigation finds, Pai may be unlikely to punish T-Mobile or impose any enforceable commitments. For example, an FCC investigation last year into mobile carriers' response to Hurricane Michael in Florida found that carriers failed to follow their own previous voluntary roaming commitments, unnecessarily prolonging outages. Pai himself called the carriers' response to the hurricane "completely unacceptable," just like he did with yesterday's T-Mobile outage. But Pai's FCC imposed no punishment related to the bad hurricane response and continued to rely on voluntary measures to prevent recurrences.

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