Verizon and the Federal Communications Commission have reached a settlement of $1,050,000 for a 911 outage in December 2022 in multiple southern states.

According to the FCC, Verizon failed to deliver 911 calls in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee during the period in question. As a result, Verizon has agreed to the fine, as well as a Consent Decree involving a compliance plan to ensure such a failure does not happen again.

The FCC says the December failure resulted in hundreds of 911 calls not going through, and followed another outage in October 2022. Following the October outage, Verizon made improvements to address the issue, but failed to completely fix it.

“When you call 911 in an emergency, it’s critical that your call goes through,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “Today’s action is part of the FCC’s ongoing effort to ensure that the public has reliable communications, including access to 911.”

“The Enforcement Bureau takes any potential violations of the Commission’s 911 rules extremely seriously. Sunny day outages, as occurred here, can be especially troubling because they occur when the public and 911 call centers least expect it,” said Loyaan A. Egal, Chief of the Enforcement Bureau. “We are committed to ensuring communications providers uphold their responsibilities in providing critical 911 services to the American public.”

Moving forward, Verizon will be required to perform risk assessments and establish “enhanced processes for implementing security policy updates” in an effort to ensure such an outage doesn’t happen again.