(Credit: Photo: Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images)
The real reason for AT&T's Thursday outage is more mundane than online theories of a malicious cyberattack or solar flares disrupting its networks.
The downtime, which reportedly affected thousands of customers early Thursday morning, was in fact due to an error that occurred while the carrier was trying to expand its network. AT&T resolved the outage by Thursday afternoon.
"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.
"We are continuing our assessment of today’s outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve," the company added.
The carrier has not yet explained what exactly the "incorrect process" was, where and how it was expanding its network, or shared how many customers were impacted by the outage.
While some individuals using Verizon and T-Mobile reported that their service was also disrupted Thursday, both Verizon and T-Mobile previously told PCMag that their networks didn't experience an outage. Any service issues may have simply been encountered during attempts to contact AT&T customers by phone or text.
The rumors that AT&T's outage could have been due to the Sun emitting solar flares caused the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to issue a statement Thursday that any cell outages due to solar flares are "unlikely."
"While solar flares can affect communication systems, radar, and the Global Positioning System (GPS), based on the intensity of the eruption and associated phenomena, it is highly unlikely that these flares contributed to the widely reported cellular network outages," NOAA said.
The US Federal Communications Commission says it's investing the AT&T outage alongside the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.
"The FCC has been in touch with AT&T, and those conversations are ongoing, and they’re trying to kind of figure out what exactly happened here," US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby told the press on Thursday.
Kirby confirmed that US emergency responders service FirstNet, which is powered by AT&T, was also impacted by the outage.
"FirstNet, which does come under Congress, was the only government equity that was impacted," Kirby said. He shared that Department of Commerce also encountered disruptions, but they were not "crippling."
"We’re working very hard to see if we can get to ground truth of exactly what happened," Kirby added.
PCMag has reached out to AT&T for comment.