GAO Report: FCC Should Improve Monitoring of Industry Efforts to Strengthen Wireless Network Resiliency

Wed Jan 10 16:33:17 UTC 2018

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-18-198
FCC Should Improve Monitoring of Industry Efforts to Strengthen Wireless 
Network Resiliency

What GAO Found
The number of wireless outages attributed to a physical incident—a natural 
disaster, accident, or other manmade event, such as vandalism—increased 
from 2009 to 2016, as reported to the Federal Communications Commission 
(FCC). During this time, the number of outages substantially increased 
from 189 to 1,079 outages, with most of the increase occurring from 2009 
to 2011. FCC officials said this increase was due in part to growth in 
wireless customers and wireless infrastructure. Almost all outages 
attributed to a physical incident were due to an accident, such as damage 
to a cable due to a digging error (74 percent) or a natural disaster (25 
percent). However, outages due to a natural disaster had a longer median 
duration (ranging from 19 to 36 hours), which was more than twice as long 
as outages caused by an accident. Power failures and failures in other 
providers' networks also play a role in wireless outages attributed to 
physical incidents. For instance, carriers reported that 87 percent of 
wireless outages attributed to a physical incident were due to a failure 
in another provider's network on which they rely.