Americans Reporting Nationwide Cellular Outages from AT&T, Cricket Wireless and Other Providers

By Michelle Chapman

A number of Americans are dealing with cellular outages on AT&T, Cricket Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile and other service providers, according to data from Downdetector.

AT&T had more than 73,000 outages around 9:30 a.m. ET, in locations including Houston, Atlanta and Chicago. The outages began at approximately 3:30 a.m. ET. The carrier has more than 240 million subscribers, the country’s largest.

Cricket Wireless, which is owned by AT&T, had more than 13,000, the outage tracking website said Thursday.

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

Verizon had more than 4,000 outages and T-Mobile had more than 1,800 outages. Boost Mobile had about 700 outages.

“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,” Verizon said.

T-Mobile said that it 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,” T-Mobile said.

Some iPhone users have seen 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, but it can make emergency calls through other carrier networks, according to Apple Support.

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.

AP

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Varios usuarios en Estados Unidos están lidiando con cortes de telefonía celular en AT&T, Cricket Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile y otros proveedores de servicios, según datos de Downdetector.

AT&T tuvo más de 64.000 cortes esta mañana, en lugares como Houston, Atlanta y Chicago. Los cortes comenzaron aproximadamente a las 3:30 de la madrugada, hora del este de Estados Unidos. El operador cuenta con más de 240 millones de suscriptores, el mayor del país.

“Algunos de nuestros clientes están experimentando interrupciones en el servicio inalámbrico esta mañana. Estamos trabajando urgentemente para restablecerles el servicio. Fomentamos el uso de llamadas por Wi-Fi hasta que se restablezca el servicio”, indicó AT&T en un comunicado.

Cricket Wireless tenía más de 13.000, afirmó el jueves el sitio web de seguimiento de interrupciones. Verizon tuvo más de 4.000 cortes y T-Mobile más de 1.900. Boost Mobile registró aproximadamente 700 cortes.

“La red de Verizon funciona con normalidad. Algunos clientes experimentaron problemas esta mañana al llamar o enviar mensajes de texto a clientes atendidos por otro proveedor. Seguimos monitoreando la situación”, informó Verizon.

T-Mobile afirma que no experimentó ningún corte.

“Nuestra red está funcionando con normalidad. Es probable que Down Detector refleje los desafíos que tenían nuestros clientes al intentar conectarse con usuarios de otras redes”, explicó T-Mobile.

Hasta el momento no se ha dado ninguna razón para la suspensión del servicio.

AP

Photo: Jenny Kane/AP