(Credit: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
UPDATE 2/23: AT&T says the outage was due to an error that occurred while the carrier was trying to expand its network. "Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyberattack," AT&T wrote on its website Thursday evening.
UPDATE: AT&T has resolved the outage, but the cause remains unclear.
In a statement, AT&T said: "We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them. 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."
Meanwhile, the FCC, Homeland Security and the FBI are investigating the incident. "The FBI is in contact with AT&T regarding today's network outage. Should we learn of any malicious activity we will respond accordingly," an FBI spokesperson tells PCMag.
Original story:Thousands of AT&T, Verizon, and other US wireless customers reported widespread service outages early Thursday morning.
Outages began to spike between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. ET for AT&T, Cricket Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile, Consumer Cellular, Boost Mobile, US Cellular, and AT&T's FirstNet service, according to outage detector site Downdetector.com, which tracks self-reported outages. Cricket is owned by AT&T.
AT&T has overwhelmingly seen the most reports so far, with thousands of outages being logged every 10 minutes. The service issues appear to be nationwide, with Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Antonio, Miami, Indianapolis, and Louisville among the US cities most impacted, Downdetector reports.
In a statement to PCMag, AT&T confirms that outages occurred, but did not share a reason why its cell service is having issues. "Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them," a representative for AT&T tells PCMag via email. "We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored."
Three hours later around 11 a.m. ET, the AT&T rep told PCMag: "Our network teams took immediate action and so far three-quarters of our network has been restored. We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers."
Cricket Wireless and Verizon saw the second and third-most outage reports. T-Mobile and Boost have reportedly seen some disruption in service as well, but do not appear to be as severely impacted.
Reached for comment, a representative for Verizon told PCMag via email: "Verizon's network is operating normally. Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier. We are continuing to monitor the situation."
A T-Mobile told PCMag a similar story, stating via email: "We did not experience an outage. Our network is operating normally. Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks."
The San Francisco Fire Department released a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, that it is aware of the AT&T outages and is "actively engaged and monitoring" the issue.
At 8 a.m. ET, AT&T's own outage map did not appear to show massive outages, but cited "cable damage," "maintenance activity," and unknown reasons for some of the outages in Atlanta and Los Angeles, for example.
Editors' Note: This story has been updated to include additional comment from AT&T and T-Mobile. Downdetector is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag's parent company.