Shortly before 1 a.m. Thursday morning, people across the United States began reporting that they had no cell and internet services. While some people started having issues much earlier, the highest number of people impacted was around 5 a.m.
According to Downdetector, an online platform that provides real-time information about various online services, customers across carriers reported having issues, though AT&T customers seemed to be the most impacted. According to the platform, at the peak, T-Mobile had around 2,000 reports, Verizon had around 4,000 reports and Cricket Wireless (owned by AT&T) had around 13,000 reports, but AT&T had more than 73,000 reports.
Jesús E. Montoya, an educational leadership doctoral student at USC, said he was studying when his data and internet, both serviced by AT&T, stopped working at exactly one in the morning, forcing him to call it a night.
“I was hoping to go a little further, maybe until 1:30 [a.m.], so it allowed me to end my studies early,” he said. “I was very confused why there was no internet service both on my phone and my home internet.”
Hours later, at 8:15 a.m., AT&T posted an update to its website, stating that the company was aware of the issues, but that “three-quarters of [the] network had been restored.”
Montoya said by the time he woke up in the morning, his service was restored, but he had no idea when it came back.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said that it was aware of the outages in a social media post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“We are aware of the reported wireless outages, and our Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is actively investigating,” the post said. “We are in touch with AT&T and public safety authorities, including FirstNet, as well as other providers.”
Shy’Ann Jones, a sophomore health promotion and disease prevention studies major with AT&T cell phone service, said she saw the “SOS” symbol on her iPhone last night when she was FaceTiming a sibling.
“I was confused,” she said. “I had no idea. I didn’t hear anything about it [the outage.]”
Jones said she didn’t feel like she was majorly impacted by it since her WiFi was still working and she was able to continue the video call.
At 12:10 p.m., AT&T reported that it had restored wireless to all impacted customers.
“We sincerely apologize to them,” the company said in a statement. “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.”
On its website, Cricket Wireless shared AT&T’s statements.
In contrast, Verizon and T-Mobile said that their networks were “fully operational” and “operating normally,” respectively. In the statements, the companies both suggested that issues reported on Downdetector were issues for people trying to “connect to users on other networks” or “those served by another carrier.”
Questions still remain as to whether this will significantly impact AT&T in the future, though Jones said she was “not really” considering switching providers.
At 4:46 p.m., AT&T said the outage was most likely not due to an external attack on their services.
“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,” the company said. “We are continuing our assessment of today’s outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve.”
The answer was one Montoya, the doctoral student, said he wanted to know more about.
“This morning when I was reading reports, not even AT&T knows what happened,” he said before the statement was released. “That’s very concerning… [I] want to know exactly what happened.”