MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Emergency phone lines across the United States are back online after an apparent nationwide outage Monday evening.
WCCO first became aware of the outage at about 6:45 p.m. after being alerted by Minneapolis police. By about 7:15 p.m., service was reported being back online by several Minnesota law enforcement agencies.
At about 8:30 p.m., Minneapolis police announced that service had been restored across the country.
⚠️8:45 P.M. UPDATE⚠️ECN confirms 911 service in MN (including Text-to-911) is restored following a multi-state outage. CenturyLink will determine the disruption’s timeline & how many calls were impacted in MN. We will provide that information when we receive it from CenturyLink.
— Minnesota ECN (@MnDPS_ECN) September 29, 2020
Law enforcement agencies were urging citizens to stop calling 911 lines to test functionality, as those calls were impeding actual emergencies.
The cause of the outage has not been directly identified.
