Tens of thousands of Americans had their cellular service disrupted today with the large majority of those outages affecting AT&T customers.
According to the Daily Wire, those outages mainly impacted customers in “Houston, Atlanta, San Antonio, Miami, Dallas, Indianapolis, and Louisville,” leaving them without the ability to call, text or use the internet on their cell phones.
The website downdector first began reporting outages at around 3:30 a.m. ET, but a graph on the website shows the largest number of reported outages between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. According to the chart, there are normally 40 reported outages during that time on a normal day and today’s peak was close to 73,000 outages.
“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. Our network teams took immediate action and so far three-quarters of our network has been restored. We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers,” AT&T said in a statement to Fox.
Many businesses, schools and families rely on their cell phones for more than just communication, but the most dangerous threat of losing cellular service has to do with access to emergency services.
San Francisco’s Fire Department tweeted that 911 and other emergency services were still available but that some customers may not be able to reach them based on the outages.
For San Francisco Emergency Alerts & Notifications, sign up at https://t.co/Be5cCCcPkZ or text zipcode to 888-777
For active SFFD incidents, media is encouraged to FIRST email us at [email protected] or call/text: 1 (628) 223-9255
SFFD Social Media Community Standards Policy:… pic.twitter.com/8VRKLNYXRa
— SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT MEDIA (@SFFDPIO) January 16, 2024
Many other cities sent out similar communications, but most phones affected by the outages still had the “SOS” symbol at the top meaning they could still call for emergency services if needed.
AT&T still has not issued any statements about why the outages occurred, but the outages only lasted a brief time and now most customers have full access to their cell phones again.
According to CNN, the outages were not the result of a terrorist attack or other malicious activity.
“The issue appears to be related to how cellular services hand off calls from one network to the next, a process known as peering,” said one industry source on the condition of anonymity.
