Investigations continue after law enforcement phone outages

ANDERSON, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - South Carolina officials said systems are back online after phone outages that impacted law enforcement agencies statewide on Tuesday, but investigations into the issue are ongoing.

The South Carolina Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office said there were no reported issues with dialing 911 but the outage was impacting ten-digit administrative lines for law enforcement agencies.

Officials in Anderson County, the City of Clemson, Pickens County, Laurens County, Abbeville County, Union County and Cherokee County experienced phone outages.

Shortly after 1:45 p.m., Morrison’s office said the administrative lines were operating again.

Paul Athey, the Division Director of SC Revenue and Fiscal Affairs, said the issue appears to be the result of a “climate-related failure,” likely the result of Hurricane Beryl, of multiple carrier links to a Comtech facility in Dallas. The carriers affected were Lumen and Verizon, Athey said.

Comtech is the provider that oversees the state’s 911 network.

Athey said all traffic was moved from Dallas to their Raleigh facility until the links in Texas can be restored. Additional investigations into the incident are ongoing.

FOX Carolina reached out to Comtech for a statement but the company declined to comment.

Outages were also being reported by law enforcement agencies in other parts of the country, including in Georgia, Texas, Missouri, Indiana and Florida.

Athey said research is still being done to determine if the outages in other states are due to the same carrier issues in Dallas.

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