While the FCC had previously said it was looking into the issue, opening a formal investigation marks a significant step in continuing federal scrutiny over the incident. As a next step in the inquiry, the agency has already requested in-depth information from AT&T concerning the cause, effect and corporate response to the incident, FCC spokesman Jonathan Uriarte said.
“The FCC is carrying out a thorough investigation into a nationwide outage of the AT&T network that affected millions of consumers and disrupted access to lifesaving communications,” Uriarte said.
In past investigations of wireless network outages, the agency has requested information such as the number of customers affected, the root cause and steps taken to restore service.
An AT&T spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday morning. In past statements, the company has apologized for the outage, saying, “Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future.”
It remains unclear why the network outage persisted for so long. The company has not said how many of its roughly 71 million postpaid wireless customers were affected. An estimated 1.7 million people reported they had lost service to the outage-tracking site Downdetector, and the FCC pointed to “millions” of people left without service.
Several government agencies have looked into the incident or continue to do so, including the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and New York’s attorney general.
