T-Mobile failure prompts inquiry

T-Mobile US Inc. had its first big network meltdown since leapfrogging AT&T Inc. to become the No. 2 wireless carrier in the U.S.

As many as 68 million of T-Mobile's wireless customers had their service disrupted for several hours Monday as the company tried to identify the problem and restore service.

The company said the failure was caused by "router" issues. T-Mobile's parent company, Deutsche Telekom AG, said Tuesday that it was related to 5G network upgrades. But the carrier is still sorting through the chain of events that caused the breakdown and has yet to provide an update. In the meantime, the Federal Communications Commission says it will investigate the matter.

It's the first big test for the new company, which absorbed Sprint Corp. in April after a two-year battle for regulatory clearance. And it puts the company's new chief executive officer, Mike Sievert, in the spotlight -- though, for now, he has yet to comment on the matter.

"The T-Mobile network outage is unacceptable," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai tweeted Monday evening when he announced the agency would launch an investigation. "We're demanding answers -- and so are American consumers."

At 1:03 a.m. EDT, T-Mobile's technology head Neville Ray tweeted to say service was fixed.

The timing is especially awkward for T-Mobile, since it just spent two years assuring regulators that joining forces would Sprint would bring a robust network. But it's not uncommon for the FCC to probe outages. Regulators look for ways to prevent future problems and hand out fines for some mishaps.

After a CenturyLink Inc. fiber-network outage in December 2018 caused more than 12 million blocked or degraded phone calls and at least 886 dropped calls to 911, the FCC issued a report and didn't fine the company.

The FCC in 2018 settled an investigation into widespread outages of emergency 911 calling for AT&T's wireless customers, saying the company agreed to a $5.25 million fine and changes in its system to reduce the likelihood of outages.

CenturyLink agreed to pay a $400 million civil penalty and enter into a compliance plan after a 911-calling outage in August 2018, when a technician made an error during the course of a routine configuration change.

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