Thousands of AT&T customers were left without service for hours for their home phone, internet and mobile phone services, according to Downdetector. The outages started popping up just before 3:30 a.m. ET, according to a graph shown on the website that tracks outages. Just before 2 p.m. ET, the number of reports had declined drastically to nearly 4,900 after spiking to more than 73,000 just after 9 a.m. ET.
Most users still impacted, 51 percent, say they are having issues with mobile phone service. Forty percent of customers currently reporting being affected say they have no signal at all, and nine percent of users say their mobile internet is down. AT&T said in a statement to FOX Business, “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.”
No cause for the outage was given, and a defense official told Fox News that there was “no indication it was a cyber attack.” The Federal Communications Commission said it was aware of the outages. They posted on X, “We are aware of the reported wireless outages, and our Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is actively investigating. We are in touch with AT&T and public safety authorities, including FirstNet, as well as other providers.” The FBI was also aware of the outage. An FBI spokesperson said, “The FBI is in contact with AT&T regarding today’s network outage. Should we learn of any malicious activity, we will respond accordingly.”
Most reported locations of customers impacted are in the south and southeast U.S. At 3:10 p.m. ET, AT&T said service had been restored. The company said, “We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them. Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future.”
Throughout the day, Downdetector also showed a spike in reported T-Mobile outages around 4 a.m. ET. A T-Mobile spokesperson told FOX Business they did not experience an outage and that their network is operating normally. Their statement reads, “Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks.” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said AT&T indicated it had no reason to think the outages were part of a cyberattack.
He told FOX Business’ Edward Lawrence, “But again, to be careful, we won’t know until an investigation has been completed, and obviously we’re going to work from the federal level to assist the network providers in doing that to the best that we can.” Verizon had a similar explanation after some of their customers reported problems. A statement from Verizon read, “Verizon’s network is operating normally. Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier. We are continuing to monitor the situation.”
Although no one knows the precise reason for the service outages, we can admit that not being able to get in contact with emergency services or our loved ones is scary. It’s reminiscent of the Netflix film “Leave the World Behind,” an apocalyptic movie where internet and phone services were down for an extended period. Still, we should stay prepared because we don’t know when the Lord will return.