Wide spread service outages in North America are affecting three of the largest cell phone service providers. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have all reported outages, with AT&T experiencing the most widespread issues, according to Down Detector.
AT&T outages began around 3 a.m. Thursday morning, with around 32.2K instances reported by 4:30 a.m. Just after 9 a.m., the number of users reporting issues stood at 72.9K.
Verizon’s issues have been comparably smaller, with their outages beginning around 3:30 a.m. and peaking around 8 a.m., with about 4,000 users reporting issues. As of 9 a.m. Thursday, T-Mobile was also experiencing issues, but had only 1,911 consumer complaints.
Boost Mobile, Consumer Cellular and Straight Talk Wireless users also experienced user complaints, though less widespread than the major providers.
The problems are spread throughout the west and east coasts, and even into some parts of Canada. Users from New York, Boston and Atlanta, as well as Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco have reported significant outages. Montreal, Canada has also been affected.
AT&T users reported they were stuck in “SOS Mode,” which only allows users to contact emergency services. However, per The New York Post, some police stations have informed locals that they may be unable to call for help in case of an emergency.
“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning,” Jim Greer, AVP of Corporate Communications at AT&T, told Men’s Journal. “We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”
AT&T did not specify a cause for the issue, nor a timeline for service restoration.
In statements to Men's Journal, both Verizon and T-Mobile contested they did not experience service outages, but rather users encountered service issues while trying to text customers on other networks.
Both companies told Men's Journal their networks were "operating normally" as of 9:50 am. "Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks," T-Mobile said.
