AT&T said Thursday its wireless network was back after an outage knocked out cellphone service for its users across the U.S., including Florida, for hours.
“We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers,” the Dallas-based company said in a statement posted on its website Thursday afternoon. “We sincerely apologize to them.”
Outage tracker Downdetector noted that outages, which began at about 3:30 a.m. ET, peaked at around 73,000 reported incidents. AT&T had more than 58,000 outages around noon ET, in locations including Houston, Atlanta and Chicago. The carrier has more than 240 million subscribers, the country’s largest.
By 3:30 p.m. ET, the reports were down to fewer than 3,000.
Cricket Wireless, which is owned by AT&T, had more than 9,000 outages at one point but the reports had also tailed off later in the afternoon.
Users of other carriers, including Verizon and T-Mobile, also reported issues but those companies said their networks were operating normally and the problems were likely stemming from customers trying to connect to AT&T users.
Tens of thousands of AT&T customers woke up Thursday morning to SOS messages displayed in the status bar on their cellphones. The message indicates that the device is having trouble connecting to their cellular provider’s network.
That prompted concerns that AT&T subscribers might have trouble calling local authorities in an emergency.
AT&T urged customers to connect to Wi-Fi to use their phones. Wi-Fi calling is a built-in feature on most Android devices and iPhones and can be turned on under the phone’s settings.
Phone providers say it’s a good idea to leave your phone’s Wi-Fi setting on even when there is no outage because it frees their cellular networks for mobile phone calls and data transfers.
On an iPhone, go into Settings and click Cellular. The next page should include a choice labeled Wi-Fi Calling. Click it if it’s not already enabled.
On Android phones, click the Phone app, then click Settings. Tap Calls and you should see a Wi-Fi Calling option.
The Florida Sheriff’s Association tweeted a message urging affected phone users to follow their local sheriff’s office for updates on how to report emergencies if they have no phone service.
Broward and Palm Beach sheriff’s offices posted messages directing affected users to text, rather than call, 911 to get help in an emergency.
AT&T posted a statement on its website at 3:10 p.m. saying that service has been restored to 100% of its customers. “We sincerely apologize to them,” the statement said. “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.”
Downdetector showed that 927 AT&T users in the South Florida metro area reported outages by about 9 a.m. That number had fallen to 12 by 4:30 p.m.
So far, no reason has been given for the outages. But Lee McKnight, an associate professor in the iSchool at Syracuse University, believes the most likely cause of the outage is a cloud misconfiguration, or human error. “A possible but far less likely outcome is an intentional malicious hack of ATT’s network, but the diffuse pattern of outages across the country suggests something more fundamental,” McKnight said in an emailed statement.
The Federal Communications Commission contacted AT&T about the outage and the Department of Homeland Security and FBI were also looking into it, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
The FBI acknowledged it had contacted AT&T. “Should we learn of any malicious activity we will respond accordingly,” the agency said.
Meanwhile, politicians wasted no time using the outage to make political points.
On his X (formerly Twitter) account, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio posted: “I don’t know the cause of the AT&T outage. But I do know it will be 100 times worse when #China launches a cyber attack on America on the eve of a #Taiwan invasion. And it won’t be just cell service they hit, it will be your power, your water and your bank.”
South Florida Sun Sentinel staff writer Shira Moolten contributed to this news article.
