Level 3 Communications regularly suffers equipment and communication issues that cause widespread internet outages for a large percentage of the population. These outages last for weeks and even months, and results in a loss of revenue for many small businesses as well access to basic services like Email; online banking; education and research portals; etc.
At any given time, much of Level 3's infrastructure is reporting as down or experiencing significant outages. This affects local populations as well as people from outside the region wishing to visit impacted websites.
A simple visual of this issue can be found via the tool located at Down Detector.
Congress needs to act to make penalties more severe for telcom providers to ensure they are held responsible for these major events.