AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile customers hit by widespread cellular outages in U.S.
www.nbcnews.com
Over 50,000 AT&T outages were reported at about 7 a.m. ET Thursday, with most issues reported in Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, according to tracking site Downdetector.

Over 50,000 AT&T outages were reported at about 7 a.m. ET Thursday, with most issues reported in Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, according to tracking site Downdetector.

AT&T’s network suffered a widespread outages across the country Thursday morning with cellular service and internet down, according to the tracking site Downdetector.

Some Verizon and T-Mobile customers also reported outages, though theirs appeared to be less widespread than AT&T.

Over 32,000 AT&T outages were reported by customers at about 4 a.m. ET Thursday. Reports dipped then spiked again to more than 50,000 around 7 a.m., with most issues reported in Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, according to the site.

That number surged to more than 71,000 just before 8 a.m. ET.

A little over 1,100 T-mobile outages and about 3,000 Verizon outages were reported as of 7 a.m. Thursday.

It’s not clear what triggered the service disruption.

  • Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
    64·
    10 months ago

    Over 50,000 AT&T outages were reported at about 7 a.m. ET Thursday, with most issues reported in Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, according to tracking site Downdetector.

    Considering the scatter, this doesn’t appear to be a network problem, unless somebody did something really stupid. Magnetic storm?

    Edit : Rumor is its a SIM registration issue. But, that doesn’t make too much sense.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
      52·
      10 months ago

      I think it’s far more likely to be an attack.

      Edit: If it does in fact turn out it’s just AT& T then hanlon’s razor and somebody made a boo boo on change control.

      • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
        32·
        10 months ago

        I dunno’, DNS hiccups cause more of an outage than this. If it’s an attack, it’s either a probe that went too far or kiddy’s first ddos script.

        • Zron@lemmy.world
          2·
          10 months ago

          If kiddy’s first ddos script can bring half the country’s cell phones down, then I think ATT has some explaining to do.

          • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
            1·
            10 months ago

            Oh, I’m sure they would for a serious, in-depth audit. Hopefully this isn’t a Lucille Ball moment.

        • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          10 months ago

          You don’t attack wireless in a town you attack the backbone network. NYC was affected as well.

          But now that it seems that only AT&t was affected, change control issues are far more likely

            • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              10 months ago

              Social engineering, zero day vulnerabilies, inside operatives. Their security runs tight ships but the towers are on the backbone and unmanned. The hardware isn’t all custom. Vulnerabilities happen. I wouldn’t be shocked if they could. E knocked out by some careful BGP hackery.

    • Igloojoe@lemm.ee
      2·
      10 months ago

      I am affected by the outage. ATT. My phone tells me i’m not registered when i try to make a call. I cant send SMS. On the outage map, it just shows that it is the cell tower that is causing outage.

      • Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
        12·
        10 months ago

        I won’t go through how you authenticate into a mobile network, but when you can’t your phone is pretty useless. The local cell doesn’t have a thing to do with it.

      • Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
        42·
        10 months ago

        If a mobile phone is all you have, and you can’t authenticate to the network, you won’t have a way to make a report.