Thousands Lose Cell Service

AT&T said Thursday it restored service to wireless customers after people across the U.S. reported problems with making cellphone calls.

The company said a widespread outage that took hours to resolve Thursday was caused by “an incorrect process” while expanding the wireless network.

The Wall Street Journal reports customers of the telecommunications giant began reporting problems on Downdetector, which tracks internet outages, after 3 a.m. ET. There were nearly 75,000 reports of outages around 9:15 a.m.

Cricket Wireless, which is owned by AT&T, also experienced network issues, with about 13,000 outages reported on Downdetector as of 9 a.m.

“We sincerely apologize to them,” an AT&T spokesman 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.”

Some AT&T users said on social media that their phones were stuck in SOS mode, meaning they had no service but could make emergency calls. 

Most smartphones can use any available cellular service to make emergency calls, so even if your carrier is having an outage, you can still dial 911. Apple also has a service that allows people to send messages to emergency services via a satellite connection for some phones if there is no cellular or Wi-Fi coverage.

Emergency services across the U.S. said the issue affected people’s ability to make or receive calls, including to 911. The outage didn’t affect 911 centers. The Massachusetts State Police said people were flooding 911 centers with calls to test if their phones worked and asked them to stop. 

Outage reports were clustered in metro areas including Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Raleigh, N.C., according to Downdetector. Still, users around the country were reporting they had no cellphone service. Dallas-based AT&T serves more than 90 million U.S. cellphone subscribers through its namesake brand and prepaid services like Cricket Wireless.

Service has been fully restored after tens of thousands of AT&T customers reported problems with their cellphones Thursday morning. The National Security Council says there's "no reason to think that this was a cybersecurity incident." The FCC and FBI are investigating. pic.twitter.com/TuV356piVj

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) February 22, 2024

Representatives for AT&T and Cricket said they were working to restore wireless service to customers. The companies encouraged people to use Wi-Fi calling until service was restored.