Sumter County communications restored after nearly four-hour internet outage

9 articles · Updated · Villages-News · Apr 28

Assistant administrator Stephen Kennedy told commissioners service was fully restored by about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday after a fiber cut in a wooded area.
The outage disrupted county phone lines, call routing and website access, including agenda packets, while many businesses and residents were also affected.
Emergency 911 service stayed online, but dispatchers temporarily lost caller-location data and used Wi-Fi-connected laptops instead; Kennedy said other counties were affected too.

If nearly $30 million in upgrades couldn't prevent a four-hour outage, how resilient are our emergency and business communications really?

How close are we to truly outage-proof emergency services, and what new risks will Next Generation 911 introduce?