A major cell phone and internet service outage affected tens of thousands of AT&T customers nationwide, as over 74,000 users reported service issues Thursday morning.
According to Downdetector, an online platform that provides mobile phone, home phone, and internet users with real-time updates regarding service outages, Thursday’s outages first started being reported just prior to 3:30 a.m. Downdetector shows that over 50% of users reported issues with mobile phone service, over 40% of users reported having no signal at all, and 8% of users reported losing internet connection.
In a statement to Fox Business, AT&T explained, “Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”
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By 9 a.m., over 74,000 AT&T customers had reported outages on Downdetector, with many customers complaining about the impact of the widespread outage.
“Should get a stimulus check for this,” one AT&T customer commented on Downdetector. Another AT&T customer wrote, “I lost my cell service at 5:56 a.m. est! I was in the middle of working when I lost it.”
As of 10 a.m. on Thursday, the most reported service outage locations included Austin, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Miami, New York City, and San Antonio.
The Downdetector website also showed an increased number of T-Mobile outage reports starting at 4 a.m. Despite the increase in reports of T-Mobile outages, a T-Mobile spokesperson told Fox Business that the company’s network is operating normally and that the company did not experience an outage Thursday.
“Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks,” the T-Mobile spokesperson stated.
Like T-Mobile, Downdetector’s website also showed a similar increase in Verizon outage reports around 4 a.m. However, Verizon claimed that the issue was not with its own network, but was linked to customers attempting to contact AT&T users.
“Verizon’s network is operating normally,” Verizon said in a statement to Fox Business. “Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier. We are continuing to monitor the situation.”
