An AT&T store in Manhattan
AT&T said it had fully restored service to tens of thousands of customers who had experienced a total outage since the wee hours of the morning. The mobile operator was down in major cities across the United States before the company was able to bring the network back up.
“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning, AT&T said in a statement received by Frequent Business Traveler and The Travelist earlier in the day. “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.”
The outage started just before 3:30 a.m. EST, according to the website Downdetector, which tracks such information. Almost 12 hours later, just before 2 p.m., the number reports began to dissipate, hitting approximately 5,000 versus over 75,000 hours earlier.
While the outage only impacted AT&T customers, people using T-Mobile or Verizon Wireless were affected only insofar as when they tried to text or ring AT&T users. Both T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless said their networks were “operating normal” in statements provided to Frequent Business Traveler.
At 3:10, AT&T announced all was well.
“We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers,” the company said. “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.”
Thus far there has been no indication what caused the outage.
The Federal Communications Commission said it was aware of the outages.
“We are aware of the reported wireless outages, and our Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is actively investigating, the agency said on social media.
“We are in touch with AT&T and public safety authorities, including FirstNet, as well as other providers.”
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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