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County IT directors outline fallout from Oct. 15 AT&T fiber cut that disrupted 911 service
Summary
County IT and emergency services staff reported an Oct. 15 AT&T backbone fiber cut that impaired Internet and cell towers across a broad corridor, temporarily limiting 911 access for residents without landlines; staff outlined short‑ and long‑term mitigation options and will return with costed proposals and a communications protocol.
Calaveras County’s information technology and emergency services leadership briefed supervisors Oct. 28 on a major AT&T backbone outage on Oct. 15 that disrupted Internet and cellular service and caused partial loss of 911 access across parts of the county.
Len De Groot, the county IT director, said a Caltrans dig struck AT&T fiber and severed a backbone path "from [one] end of the corridor through San Andreas and to Tuolumne County," taking down AT&T service and affecting other providers that rely on AT&T backbone lines. The cut disabled about a dozen cell towers in the area and forced automatic reroutes of incoming 911 calls; many calls were forwarded through the California Highway Patrol public safety access point or to Amador County under mutual‑aid arrangements.
De Groot said the county’s VoIP phones, which rely on the same carrier path, lost inbound and outbound calling in places and that residents who lack POTS (plain old telephone service) landlines could not reach 911 where cell coverage and Internet were down. "The only people who could call 911 in those areas were people who had landlines," De Groot said.
Staff outlined mitigation options including negotiating with alternate carriers on different physical paths, using Comcast as a backup provider on county campus networks, moving some services to cloud platforms, and deploying satellite uplinks (for example, dedicated Starlink circuits) and predesignated roaming/Wi‑Fi‑calling steps for residents. Eric Holt, director of the Office of Emergency Services, stressed the operational need for a communications protocol and predesignated contingency numbers and said staff would compile costs and recommended steps.
Supervisors urged rapid follow‑up. Several raised equity and reliability concerns — rural residents with lower incomes may not have modern phones that support Wi‑Fi calling or satellite fallback — and asked staff to pursue both near‑term measures to protect the sheriff’s dispatch center and longer‑term state coordination on NextGen 911 upgrades. De Groot said Comcast currently provides a campus backup and staff will investigate dedicated circuits or separate physical paths for critical public‑safety sites.
Board action: staff were asked to return with a menu of options, estimated costs and a communications protocol for notifying jurisdictions and residents during outages.
