AT&T Concerned About Outage
Recently, there was a data outage for thousands of AT&T customers which lasted many hours. This outage started around 3:30 AM ET on Thursday according to an outage tracking website. Around 32 thousand outages were reported around 4 AM ET.
Outage reports dipped then spiked once more at around 7 AM ET. Reports began decreasing at around 2 PM ET to around 4,900 reports when it was at 79,000 at around 9 AM ET. Many users, however, were still being impacted by this outage. 51 percent of customers say they are having issues with their mobile service. 40 percent are saying they have no signal at all, and nine percent are saying their mobile internet is not working.
AT&T said in a statement earlier that they were aware of the outage and their team immediately began to fix the problem. They stated that three quarters of their service had been restored and they were trying to restore the rest as quickly as possible.
AT&T stated that there had completely restored their services at around 3:10 PM ET. Most of the people affected were from the South and Southeast of the U.S. Many people were concerned by this since they were unable to call 911 in an emergency. Thankfully, service has since been restored for everyone.
FBI Investigating This Outage
The Federal Communications Commission or the FCC confirmed they are investigating this outage. “We are aware of the reported wireless outages, and our Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is actively investigating,” said the FCC on a statement made in the social media platform X formerly known as Twitter.
The White House says that federal agents are in touch with AT&T about the outages. However, there is still no answer as to what could’ve been the reason for this outage. San Francisco Fire Department advised people to try their best to find a way to reach 911.
If their phone is not working, to please find a landline. If there is no landline, try to please come in contact with a neighbor or a friend with a different carrier to help reach 911.
AT&T however, was not the only one that had to deal with outages. Some of Verizon customers were also experiencing similar problems with outages.
However, Verizon stated that all of their systems were operating normally. T-Mobile and Cricket were also said to experience issues as well. T-Mobile, just like Verizon, reassured customers that their systems were working perfectly.
However, Cricket wireless, since it is owned by AT&T, did suffer from the outages. Around 13,500 Cricket Wireless customers reported problems at around 8 AM ET on Thursday. This number later decreased to about ten thousand by 10 AM ET.
False Alarm, Just Human Error
National Security John Kirby said the FBI is looking into the matter trying to use a federal perspective to figure out what exactly happened at AT&T. So far however, there is no sign that this outage was made by hackers. There is no sign of a cyberattack being done.
Lee McKnight, associate professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies, stated that the most likely cause of this outage was made by a cloud misconfiguration, otherwise known as a simple human mistake.
Massachusetts State Police have asked people to please not try and call 911 to test if it goes through or not. Please only call for an emergency only. “If you can successfully place a non-emergency call to another number via your cell service then your 911 service will also work.” said state police in a post on the social media platform X.
Written by Erika Cano
Sources:
CNN: AT&T outage resolved, authorities investigating
NBC News: AT&T service restored after customers hit by widespread cellular outages in the U.S.
Fox Business: Cellphone outage hits AT&T customers nationwide; Verizon and T-Mobile users also affected
Top and Featured Image Courtesy of Mike Mozart Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
Inset Image Courtesy of matthauer Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
