Phone Service into Police Communications Center Interrupted

Published on September 15, 2023

UPDATE AS OF 5:25 P.M.

The Police Department’s phone vendor and City staff restored services to normal at about 5:20 p.m.

Today’s outage of the phone systems in the Police Department’s 24-hour dispatch center was initially caused by an interruption in the AT&T phone network; once that was re-established, there were other technical issues that still needed to be resolved on the Palo Alto side of the connection inside the dispatch center to fully restore service. 

Once the outage began, public safety dispatchers immediately transferred all 9-1-1 services to Santa Clara County Communications.  Anyone in Palo Alto or Stanford who called 9-1-1 to report an emergency (police, fire, or medical) while the outage was occurring would have had their call answered by a public safety dispatcher from Santa Clara County, who in turn relayed the information to dispatchers in Palo Alto via special dedicated phone lines that are kept in reserve for this very situation.  The emergency response from Palo Alto or Stanford first responders then continued as normal.

Staff and vendors will be investigating the exact cause and what led to the prolonged outage, so that we can take the necessary steps of avoiding a similar situation in the future.  This is the longest disruption to dispatch center phones in the memory of current staff members.

Initial community update: (posted at 12:15 p.m.) 

Currently, all phone lines in our 24-hour communication center (including 9-1-1 and 650-329-2413) are not functioning due to a widespread network outage from AT&T. If you need emergency assistance (police, fire, or medical), please call 9-1-1 and your call will be automatically switched to Santa Clara County Communications.

We will advise when regular service has been restored.