AT&T customers have service again after thousands of Americans nationwide experienced a disruption in their cellular service Thursday morning, with AT&T reporting over 60,000 customers not being able to call, text or even access 911.
Around 7 a.m. Eastern time, over 50,000 customers experienced outages. By 9 a.m. Eastern time, that number increased to over 70,000.
According to Downdetector, customers in Houston, Atlanta, San Antonio, Miami, Dallas, Indianapolis and Louisville were mostly affected.
AT&T spokesman Jim Greer released a statement regarding the outage.
“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning,” he said. “We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of wifi calling until service is restored.”
While AT&T networks have had outages in the last few days, Thursday’s was the largest outage the carrier service experienced.
Verizon, T-Mobile, Cricket and UScellular customers also reported experiencing disruptions. Both Verizon and T-Mobile posted on social media that their customers were not affected, except when trying to reach customers using other carriers.
National security communications advisor John Kirby told reporters on Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI were investigating the outage, and while the cause was unknown, they were working hard to determine the “truth.” There was some speculation that it was the result of a cyber attack.
The company posted an update on its website Thursday afternoon stating that wireless service was restored to those affected. Thursday evening, AT&T issued another statement, ensuring that the outage was not the result of 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, not a cyber attack. We are continuing our assessment of today’s outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve,” the update stated.
AT&T is claiming yesterday's mass service outages leaving people with no cell service, SOS messages, and no way to contact 911 was caused by a software update.
Where are my fellow tech workers? I'm not buying this from a company AT&T's size that has proper testing teams and… pic.twitter.com/T1e69odb7b
— Kristi L. Talmadge (@KristiTalmadge) February 23, 2024
Several sources briefed on the incident confirmed AT&T’s update. One source stated that the carrier performs regular updates and that the outage was not caused by an outside factor.
According to its website, AT&T serves over 100 million customers.
