Cause of 911 Network Outage Determined

The cause of a 911 Network Outage that hit much of Michigan has been determined.

Officials say that around 3:15 p.m. on January 10th, technicians at Peninsula Fiber Network discovered a problem with the company’s optical transport service, which facilitates the transfer of information. That error caused a database corruption, which led to more issues. 911 service was interrupted throughout the state for around an hour and a half, and emergency calls were redirected to alternate phone numbers while workers fixed the issue.

“We take our mission-critical role in delivering consistent and reliable service to Michigan’s 911 operators very seriously and build multiple redundancies into our network.” said Peninsula Fiber Network General Manager Scott Randall. “Despite our best preparations, some calls were still disrupted and for that we are deeply sorry. We are now making several upgrades to the whole system to eliminate the possibility of additional network errors in the future.”

The telecommunications company says that it is investing $6 million on a redesign of its network and the installation of new optical transport network equipment to be completed over the next several months.