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·
    9 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·
      9 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·
        9 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·
          9 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·
            9 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·
          9 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·
              9 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·
      9 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·
        9 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·
        9 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.