COLORADO SPRINGS — As AT&T reported outages for tens of thousands of customers nationwide on Thursday, the Colorado Springs Police Department (CSPD) and Colorado Springs Fire Department (CSFD) said their crews experienced the impacts.
Both departments use AT&T FirstNet, a cell service for first responders that gives them boosted connections in areas with poor service. However, the service was not immune to Thursday’s outages while first responders were out on calls.
Ashley Franco, Public Information Officer for CSFD, said crews saw outages from about 3:45 a.m. to 4:35 a.m. Thursday morning. She said the outage impacted CSFD mobile phones and computers that hold information about calls for service.
"What those computers do for us is really give us the information on what call we're responding to, any information that our call takers and our dispatchers are getting. It helps us with GPS, it helps us navigate, you know, where we're going," said Franco.
She said the system also has a tracking device that shows which engine is responding to which call as well as when an engine is back in service after a call. During the outage, she said crews relied solely on dispatchers to provide information over radios.
Colorado Springs Police said the outage affected some CSPD cell phones and computers for about 90 minutes to two hours. Police said all communication was done through radios and the outage had no impact on operations Thursday morning.
Franco said crews rely on radios every day of the week, so the switch did not interrupt operations. However, she said it can put more stress on dispatchers who are relaying more information to first responders.
NBC News reports the widespread AT&T outage leaving thousands without service on Thursday was likely caused by a process error and not a cyberattack.
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