AT&T has temporarily suspended its Smart Limits parental control service after the company discovered the service interfered with emergency 911 calling.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, AT&T found that the service, which allows parents to block particular calls to their children’s phones, blocked 911 dispatchers from calling those phones back should an emergency call be disconnected.

AT&T unveiled the Smarts Limits program last February (though it was launched earlier this month) as part of an industrywide initiative to promote child safety over telecom services. The application is spread across all of AT&T’s access platforms, allowing parents to place controls over their kids’ usage of wireline and wireless voice calling and Web surfing — all from a single online portal.

On the wireless side, the portal settings could specifically prevent children from making or receiving calls at set times of the day, such as when they are attending school. The service, however, is set up to allow children to make 911 calls at any time. But the problem was with emergency personnel contacting children. If a 911 call is dropped, for instance, a dispatcher would not be to call the child back during the call-blocking period.