911 outages have become a fact of life - are we even fixing this? [telecom]

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The names have changed, but the failures continue

By Sean Hollister

In 2014, after what we described as "frequent failures," a previous administration's FCC attempted to change how the United States' emergency 911 system works, including making it clear who's responsible when multiple states inexplicably lose the ability to dial 911 at once.

Some of that accountability might have come in handy this week -- because we still don't know what caused yesterday's 911 outage. And it's not clear anything would change even if we knew.