AT&T customers nationwide impacted by major cell outage

Over 70,000 impacted as AT&T users report disruptions, including emergency service calls.

A nationwide cellular phone outage affected cities across the US early Thursday. Thousands of AT&T customers experienced service disruptions, preventing them from sending texts, accessing the internet, or making calls, including emergency calls to 911.

Over 50,000 incidents were reported around 7am ET, according to data from Downdetector.com. Reports of outages surged to over 70,000 by 9am ET.

By 11am ET, service failure reports had dropped to 60,000. Shortly after noon, AT&T stated it had restored 75% of its network. By 4pm ET, the company announced it had “restored wireless service to all our affected customers.”

“We sincerely apologize to them,” reads the company’s statement.

Earlier, AT&T spokesperson Jim Greer stated, “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 wifi calling until service is restored.”

AT&T, the largest cellular service provider in the US with 240 million subscribers, has not provided a detailed explanation for the outage but stated in a release that it did not believe it was due to a cyber attack. “Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network,” the company said in a statement.

While AT&T networks experienced intermittent outages in recent days, Thursday’s outage was significantly larger in scale. The most affected cities, according to the website, included San Francisco, Houston, Atlanta, and Chicago.

ABC News reported that federal law enforcement agencies in the US are investigating whether a technical malfunction or a cyberattack could have caused the outage. A memo from the Department of Homeland Security’s digital threats division, Cisa, stated, “the cause of the outage is unknown and there are no indications of malicious activity.”

Verizon, T-Mobile, Cricket, and UScellular users also reported disruptions, although the outage for these services was much smaller compared to AT&T, as per Downdetector. Verizon and T-Mobile clarified in tweets that the outage had not affected their customers, except when trying to contact customers of another carrier.

T-Mobile stated, “We did not experience an outage.” Verizon’s statement mentioned, “Verizon’s network is operating normally.”

AT&T operates a network for first responders and emergency services called FirstNet, which experienced an outage alongside the company’s general cell network. However, AT&T stated that FirstNet was back online by 10:30 am US Eastern Time. A post on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, from the San Francisco Fire Department, indicated that the outage was affecting people’s ability to reach emergency services by dialing 911.

“We are aware of an issue impacting AT&T wireless customers from making and receiving any phone calls (including to 911),” the fire department stated, adding that it was “actively engaged and monitoring this.” Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications issued a similar statement.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens confirmed that calls to and from the city’s emergency services were operational, stating, “Atlanta’s e-911 is able to receive inbound and make outbound calls. We have received calls from AT&T customers that their cellular phones are in SOS mode.”

The Massachusetts State Police reported that their dispatch centers had been overwhelmed with concerned callers testing their phone service by dialing 911. The bureau advised against this practice.

In a statement on X, the department said, “Many 911 centers in the state are getting flooded w/ calls from people trying to see if 911 works from their cell phone. Please do not do this. If you can successfully place a non-emergency call to another number via your cell service, then your 911 service will also work.”