Massachusetts Residents Hit by 911 Emergency Call Outage

Massachusetts residents were unable to make 911 emergency calls for hours earlier this week after one of its 911 servers suddenly blocked out everyone from making emergency calls.

According to the Massachusetts State 911 Department, the "technical issue" was first reported Tuesday afternoon after several callers were unable to reach the state's 911 call centers.

A subsequent investigation revealed that the service outage was a result of its 911 vendor Comtech's firewalls suddenly blocking out everyone from contacting state dispatchers.

Massachusetts Dep't: 911 Outage Not a Cyberattack Incident

The state department claimed that the firewall malfunction was not caused by a cyberattack or hack on state services, although the exact reason for the technical glitch is yet to be determined.

Firewalls often activate in the event of a cyberattack or data breach to prevent hackers from accessing important data and personal information.

The Massachusetts department also ensured that the dispatchers were still able to identify the phone number of callers even if the call did not

911 Emergency Call Outages Becoming More Frequent

The 911 outage in Massachusetts follows the growing trend of emergency call disruptions across the US over technical issues and limited accessibility options.

Earlier in April, several states reported a 911 service mass outage for hours after a botched light pole installation took out people's connection to 911 dispatch centers.

Thousands of residents from Nevada, Texas, South Dakota, and Nebraska were estimated to have been affected by the incident.

This is in addition to several data service provider outages this year, primarily the AT&T outages in February and June, that rendered many users incapable of making distress calls.

Despite growing technical issues with the aging equipment, the Federal Communication Commission is having difficulties urging lawmakers to fund next-generation 911 technologies for better accessibility and protection against service disruptions.