AT&T Customers Face New Nationwide Outage
Did you wake up today and wonder where that good morning text from your significant other was? Did you try to text that group chat only to find out that none of your messages went through? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you are most likely an AT&T customer who woke up today to find a disruption in the cellular service.
More than 74,000 AT&T customers have reported a network outage, leaving a majority of the provider’s patrons with no service and disconnected.
Is anyone seeing AT&T is down? I'm getting no service no matter what. Restart and all
— MobileMasterTech (@Terrell352) February 22, 2024
AT&T is down, looks like if I want to communicate with her I’ll have to send her a message in a bottle
— Ben Wegmann (@benwegmann) February 22, 2024
The widespread cellular outage affected the telephone company’s customers all across the country. It started around 4:00 A.M. ET Thursday night and lasted until 2:00 P.M. that day. The Federal Communications Commission will conduct an investigation concerning the system failure. Although federal agents are working with AT&T to discover the root cause, there are no answers on why the provider has failed to provide for its customers yet.
AT&T made a statement at 10:15 A.M. CT stating, “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.” But “some” customers would be an understatement.
The data mentions that over 74,000 customers were affected by the service interruptions, and that’s not even an accurate number. That statistic stems from self-reported outages, tracked by a site that calculates how many customers reported the system failure. Due to this, there were still a plethora of unaccounted customers who experienced issues but never reported them.
Thankfully, the providers posted another statement on their website today at 2:10 P.M. CT explaining, “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.”
Phone service finally back! #ATT pic.twitter.com/XGFPZwfjKB
— Mo (@MissMo232323) February 22, 2024
The number one concern resulting from the outage was people being unable to reach 911 in an emergency. The service postponement had put AT&T patrons in potential danger. Due to this concern, fire departments and emergency centers alerted everyone to seek alternative ways to contact law enforcement. You can see this on X when the San Francisco Fire Department posted that AT&T customers should try to get a hold of someone with a different carrier or even try calling from a landline.
We are aware of an issue impacting AT&T wireless customers from making and receiving any phone calls (including to 911).
— SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT MEDIA (@SFFDPIO) February 22, 2024
We are actively engaged and monitoring this.
The San Francisco 911 center is still operational.
If you are an AT&T customer and cannot get through to 911,… pic.twitter.com/TUIEBkqmkI
Access to emergency correspondents was a growing concern, but 911.gov ensures that anyone with a cellphone can call or text, even if their provider is down. The website states, “All wireless phones, even those that are not subscribed to or supported by a specific carrier, can call 911. However, calls to 911 on phones without active service do not deliver the caller’s location to the 911 call center, and the call center cannot call these phones back to find out the caller’s location or the nature of the emergency.”
Although calls could still go through to emergency correspondents, people in need wouldn’t be able to be located or be given a call back if disconnected, which could have been a significant safety hazard.
AT&T is now offering $5 in credit to all of the customers that were affected by the outage.
