Early this week, 9 counties in Southeastern Minnesota were affected by a 9-1-1 outage. The counties affected were: Rice, Steele, Goodhue, Dodge, Freeborn, Mower, Wabasha, Winona, and Olmsted. A press release from the Goodhue County Sheriff's Office states that the outage is now being investigated by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Emergency Communication Network. 

Goodhue County Sheriff Marty Kelly posted the release to the Sheriff's Office's Facebook page.

The outage which began on Sunday, January 19 at 8:52 PM lasted until Monday, January 20 at 1:00 AM. According to the press release that during that time there were 369 missed calls to 9-1-1.

CenturyLink which owns the phone system that handles the 9-1-1 number in the 9 counties affected by the outage is required "to provide a cause for the disruption to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Emergency Communication Network."

CenturyLink is in the 4th year of a 5 year deal that was worth $29.5 million dollars to oversee the 9-1-1 program in Minnesota.

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