Verizon agreed to pay $3.4 million to settle a complaint about an April 2014 service outage that left more than 750,000 northern California residents unable to reach 911 for several hours, the Federal Communications Commission announced Wednesday.
A Verizon contractor experienced a malfunction at one of its call centers, which left Verizon wireless customers throughout areas in northern California unable to reach 911 operators, according to the complaint. The contractor didn’t tell Verizon about the outage until it was resolved. While Verizon notified state officials about the problem, the company still faced a federal fine because it’s ultimately responsible. As part of the settlement, Verizon has agreed to take a variety of steps to improve the reliability of its 911 service.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
