Embodiments of the present invention provide a method and a device for cell outage detection. The method includes: receiving, by a controlling base station of a first cell, a request message, where the request message is used to request an outage measurement on a second cell, the first cell is a neighboring cell of the second cell; selecting, by the controlling base station of the first cell, a user equipment in the first cell to measure the second cell; receiving, by the controlling base station of the first cell, measurement information obtained by the user equipment by measuring the second cell, and generating, according to the measurement information, information used to determine whether an outage occurs in the second cell; and sending, by the controlling base station of the first cell, a reply message including the information used to determine whether an outage occurs in the second cell.