Americans report nationwide cell phone outages from AT&T, Cricket Wireless, and other providers

According to data from Downdetector, many Americans are dealing with cell phone outages from AT&T, Cricket Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile and other service providers. AT&T, the hardest hit company, is actively working to restore service to all customers.

AT&T reported more than 58,000 outages around noon ET in areas including Houston, Atlanta and Chicago. The outage, which began around 3:30 a.m. ET, has resulted in approximately 73,000 reported incidents. The company’s subscriber count is the largest in the country, exceeding 240 million.

“This morning, some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions. Our network team took immediate action and so far three-quarters of our network has been restored. The remaining customers… We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to the United States,” AT&T and Cricket said in a statement.

Down Detector announced Thursday that AT&T’s Cricket Wireless experienced more than 9,000 outages.

Verizon had more than 2,000 outages and T-Mobile had more than 1,400 outages. Boost Mobile experienced approximately 700 failures.

“Verizon’s network is operating normally. This morning, some customers were experiencing issues calling or texting customers served by another carrier. “We continue to monitor the situation,” Verizon said.

T-Mobile said there were no outages.

“Our network is operating normally. The Down Detector may reflect issues our customers were having trying to connect to users on other networks,” T-Mobile said. Ta.

Some iPhone users have seen an SOS message appear on their phone’s status bar. According to Apple Support, this message indicates that your device can’t connect to your mobile provider’s network, but you can still make emergency calls through other carriers’ networks.

So far, the reason for the power outage has not been revealed. But Lee McKnight, an associate professor at Syracuse University’s iSchool, believes the most likely cause of the outage is cloud misconfiguration, or human error.

“While a far less likely outcome could be a deliberate malicious hack of ATT’s network, the widespread pattern of outages across the country suggests something more fundamental. McKnight said in an emailed statement.

Alexander Wiglinski, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said there are possible workarounds for those still affected by the power outage.

“Many mobile phones can make Wi-Fi calling, so as a potential backup, if you’re near a Wi-Fi access point, you might be able to use that if you’re affected by a network outage.” No,” he said. in a statement sent via email.