Happy Thursday morning! February is drawing to a close, the weather is getting a little bit warmer in parts of the country, and AT&T is experiencing a massive outage that’s affecting its cellular and internet services. It’s a bit of a mess.
How many people are without service? When will service be restored? Here’s a quick recap of what you need to know.
When did the AT&T outage start?
Around 4 a.m. ET on Thursday, February 22, more than 32,000 outages were reported across AT&T’s network. Once 7 a.m. rolled around, that number jumped to over 50,000 people. Per the Down Detector website, there were nearly 75,000 outage reports just before 9:15 a.m. ET.
Is the AT&T outage still happening?
It appears that the AT&T outage is still ongoing. According to Down Detector, there were around 59,000 outage reports still coming in around 11 a.m. ET. However, that is below the 75,000 spike seen earlier in the morning.
According to a “Network Update” from AT&T published at 11:15 a.m. ET, “three-quarters of our network has been restored. We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers.”
In other words, the AT&T outage is actively being fixed, but it’s still not 100% complete.
Where is the AT&T outage happening?
Once again, looking at Down Detector, the areas most severely impacted by the AT&T outage appear to be Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. There are also outage reports throughout the state of Florida, parts of Michigan, and New York.
In addition to the reports coming in on the Down Detector website, you can also use AT&T’s own outage map to see if there are any reported issues in your specific area.
Are other cellular networks down?
Although AT&T is experiencing the worst of the issues, it’s not the only cellular carrier with ongoing outages. Cricket Wireless, a prepaid carrier that uses AT&T’s network, is also showing over 12,000 outage reports as of 9:15 a.m. ET. Verizon outage reports spiked at over 4,000 this morning, in addition to increasing outage reports for Consumer Cellular, T-Mobile, Boost Mobile, US Cellular, and Straight Talk.
In the case of Verizon and T-Mobile, specifically, both carriers have confirmed that their networks aren’t directly experiencing service outages and that reports on sites like Down Detector are likely a result of Verizon and T-Mobile users trying to call or text people on AT&T.
When will the AT&T outage be over?
AT&T has confirmed to NBC News that it’s aware of the outage, with the carrier saying: “Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning.” Further, AT&T says it is “working urgently to restore service to them.” It also recommended that impacted AT&T subscribers use “Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”
At the time of publication, the AT&T account on X (formerly Twitter) is still actively responding to customer complaints about the outage. It’s currently unclear when things will be back to normal.
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