Multiple Cell Service Outages Disrupt US

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Facts

  • According to the website downdetector.com, cell service provider AT&T dealt with more than 60K reports of service outages as of 7:30 a.m. EST Thursday. Service providers Verizon, T-Mobile, USCellular, and Consumer Cellular also experienced outages, but at a much smaller scale.1
  • Among the customers affected, a reported 51% said they had issues with cellphone service, 8% said their issues were with internet outages, and over 33% said they had no service at all.2
  • AT&T's outage began at around 4 a.m. EST with over 32K customers reporting no service. That total topped out at over 71K. Most outages were reported in Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Atlanta.3
  • While T-Mobile and Verizon also received 800 outage reports, those companies said the issues they were having only occurred when their customers tried to call or text people who use AT&T.4
  • Emergency services reported that people were calling 911 to see if their phones were working, to which the police told them to stop. Representatives from AT&T and its subsidiary Cricket Wireless told customers to use Wi-Fi calling until the issue is resolved.5
  • No cause for the outage has been reported, and the Federal Communications Commission says its Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is 'actively investigating' the situation. Meanwhile, a defense official told Fox News there was 'no indication it was a cyber attack.'2

Sources: 1CBS, 2FOX News, 3NBC, 4New York Post and 5WSJ.

Narratives

  • Narrative A, as provided by The New York Times. Luckily, this issue appears to have been mostly limited to AT&T customers, who have the luxury of using Wi-Fi networks for calls while the company investigates the matter and solves the problem. Any wider outage might've meant a cyber attack that would have required a greater response.
  • Narrative B, as provided by Wired. AT&T, a multibillion-dollar company, went too far in asking its paying customers to inconvenience themselves and use Wi-FI calling. Many Americans are being left stranded by this outage and the company better have a good explanation to customers and the government when its investigation is complete.

Predictions