The immediate thing that comes to mind for folks is to dial 911 in cases of life-threatening emergencies. In Dallas, a mysterious glitch has occurred, preventing other callers from getting through. T-Mobile is caught in the middle of it, a reason why it sent a team of engineers to look into the problem.

According to Fox4TV, T-Mobile handsets in Dallas were reportedly making ghost calls to 911. There were allegedly over 360 calls made to 911 at one point, something that may have prevented a babysitter from making an urgent call. The glitch could be one reason tied up to the death of a 6-month-old child and also to another one who passed away.

The T-Mobile Glitch

It will be interesting what engineers will find from the allegations. According to Phone Arena, once a T-Mobile caller hangs up after dialing 911, the phone used to make the call would make further continuous calls to 911. In what could be similar to a DDoS attack, such prevents other callers from getting through. The babysitter was reportedly using a T-Mobile phone.

Life-threatening cases have happened before

The case involving Brandon Alex is not the first one. Though it has yet to be confirmed that T-Mobile is to be blamed, a similar incident happened last March 6. A surge of calls flooded 911 where 360 calls were put on hold at one point.

The incident is seen as a possible reason behind the death of Brian Cross, the husband of Dallas Morning News reporter David Taffet. Taffet reportedly got the got the message “please hold on, all operators were busy,” waiting for a few minutes before the call was cut. He called again and it only took paramedics only three minutes to arrive though Cross had already passed away, CBS reported.

T-Mobile engineers hope to get to the bottom of it all even as the mayor of the city vows to get to the root cause of it all. As a temporary measure, the city is telling residents not to hang up when making a 911 call since it could cause further delays.

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Topics T-Mobile