Charter Communications has agreed to pay a $15 million civil penalty to settle an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) into violations of network and 911 outage notification rules, the FCC announced on Monday.
The FCC stated that Charter admitted to failing to comply with rules regarding notifications to public safety officials and the commission itself in connection with three unplanned network outages and numerous scheduled maintenance-related outages in 2023. One significant incident occurred in February 2023, when Charter’s network experienced a minor denial of service attack.
In response to the settlement, Charter expressed satisfaction with the resolution, noting that the primary outcome would be increased reporting of planned maintenance to the FCC. The company clarified that the fine was due to administrative notification failures rather than cybersecurity violations.
The FCC highlighted that in one instance, Charter did not notify over 1,000 emergency call centers of a service disruption that affected 911 service and did not adhere to the commission’s outage reporting rules. The settlement includes a pioneering application of cybersecurity measures, such as network segmentation and vulnerability mitigation management, specifically related to 911 communications services and network outage reporting.
FCC regulations mandate that providers like Charter inform 911 call centers as soon as possible of outages lasting longer than 30 minutes that could impact these centers.
This settlement follows a series of fines imposed by the FCC on other major telecommunications companies for similar violations, Reuters news report said.
Last month, Verizon Communications’ wireless business agreed to pay a $1.05 million fine after a December 2022 outage that lasted nearly two hours and disrupted hundreds of 911 calls.
In 2021, T-Mobile USA settled an FCC probe for $19.5 million after a 2020 outage caused over 20,000 failed 911 calls.
Last week, the FCC reported that a nationwide AT&T wireless outage in February, which lasted over 12 hours, blocked more than 92 million voice calls and prevented over 25,000 attempts to reach 911.
