SOS: AT&T Customers all Across the Country are Experiencing Disrupted Phone Service

This morning, as Americans with AT&T as their cell phone provider were getting ready to head to work, school or the airport, the cell phone company’s network apparently went down.

Nearly 75,000 customers reported not being able to make calls, including emergency calls, send text messages or even access the internet on digital-service tracking site DownDetector. This, of course, only accounts for the self-reported outages. 

The outage has lasted at least five hours, according to the tracking website.

Reports were rising throughout the morning and tapered off around 9 a.m. Eastern Time. 

AT&T, which is one of the most popular telecom operators in the U.S., acknowledged its widespread outage but did not provide a reason for the system failure and assured customers they are working quickly to resolve the matter. 

“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them,” AT&T said in a statement. “We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”

While not AT&T’s customers have been dealing with interruptions to their service, according to AT&T’s statement, the company is encouraging customers to use Wi-Fi calling as they work to restore service to them. 

AT&T, whose shares were down 2.5% in morning trading, has a 5G network that services 290 million customers across the country, according to the company’s website.

T-Mobile and Verizon said their networks were unaffected by AT&T’s service outage and customers reporting outages may have been unable to reach customers who use AT&T. 

The outage has affected people’s ability to reach emergency services by dialing 911, according to posts on the X social media platform by government departments in many major U.S. cities.

U.S. Senator Rick Scott of Florida said he had reached out to AT&T to get an update on the outage.

“Florida law enforcement is doing everything it can to keep people safe, and I expect AT&T to keep us informed on what it is doing to get 911 services fully back online ASAP,” he said in a post on X.

You can find more updates on X and major media sources including Reuters.