By Marlene Lenthang—
NBC News
Law enforcement agencies in four states were overwhelmed by severe disruptions to the 911 emergency service, which prevented millions of people from contacting authorities late Wednesday.
Many of the service outages, recorded in Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota and Texas, were fixed that same afternoon. Although authorities have not specified the cause of the interruptions, they occur after the Department of Homeland Security warned of the increased risks of cyberattacks on 911 services as they move to Internet-based systems.
So far, there is no indication that the failures were caused by a cyberattack or other malicious act, law enforcement officials told NBC News, sister network of Noticias Telemundo, on Thursday.
"We are investigating," the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wrote on social network X on Thursday.
Less than two months ago, a widespread AT&T outage left thousands of people in several states without phone service and affected some 911 calls for hours, but the company said it was likely due to an error and not a cyberattack.
Local security forces reported this Wednesday the total interruption of service throughout the state of South Dakota shortly before 7 p.m. (local time). Rapid City police offered area residents alternative emergency phone numbers, and service was restored two hours later.
The South Dakota Department of Public Safety reported Wednesday night that “texting 9-1-1 is working in most locations” as an option for contacting authorities.
In Nevada, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said around 7 p.m. (local time) that there was “an outage in 911 affecting your ability to contact us at this time.” Locals were urged to dial 911 on cell phones, which they were able to see and call back, and insisted that calls from landlines were “not working at this time.”
Calls were working again at 9pm. “Everyone who contacted us during the outage has been called back and provided assistance,” she noted.
The Del Rio police, in Texas, reported that the problem is "with the operator and not with the city's systems." The problem seemed to be with the T-Mobile service, Juan Hernández, the department's communications supervisor, said Thursday.
“Anyone who is a T-Mobile customer was having trouble using their phones,” he added, “it wasn't anything on our end, there wasn't a 911 outage, it was a T-Mobile one.”
The agent added that T-Mobile had been alerted by customers about having problems Wednesday night and that it was ultimately resolved. No injuries or serious problems were reported in connection with the service interruption.
However, the Chase County Sheriff's Office stated that “911 is down throughout the state of Nebraska” for all cell companies except T-Mobile, and landlines were still able to get through 911. .
Kathy Allen, director of 911 in Douglas County, Nebraska, said in a statement that the service
He was “fully restored” at 4 a.m. (local time) on Thursday.
Lumen, a global communications services provider, informed the department of the cause of the outage: “There was a fiber outage, but they did not disclose the location of the damage,” Allen said.
An AT&T spokesperson commented Thursday that the failures were “not a FirstNet problem,” referring to the First Responder Network Authority, a national public safety network built with AT&T. NBC News has reached out to other major mobile phone companies for comment.