On Thursday, February 22, around 4 a.m. ET, more than 32,000 outages were recorded across AT&T’s network. By 7 a.m., that figure had risen to more than fifty thousand. About 75,000 outages were reported just before 9:15 a.m. ET, according to the Down Detector website.
Let’s read the news and find out more.
AT&T reveals reason for Thursday’s massive outage
AT&T has been facing service outages on its 5G network, which serves approximately 290 million people in the United States, for more than ten hours.
The areas hardest hit by the AT&T outage were Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Atlanta. Additionally, complaints have also been filed regarding outages in several locations in Florida, Michigan and New York.
After the wireless services of hundreds of thousands of American subscribers were interrupted by a software bug, the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security launched an investigation into the outage.
On Thursday evening, AT&T announced that an interruption in phone calls and text messages that affected thousands of U.S. subscribers on its network was not due to a cyberattack.
Instead, AT&T said in a statement posted Thursday evening on its website that the Internet and cell phone outages were the result of maintenance it was performing on its infrastructure.
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The company’s latest updated statement read: “Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used during the extension of our network, and not by a cyberattack. We are continuing our evaluation of today’s outage to ensure we continue to provide the service our customers deserve.
On its website at 11:15 a.m. ET, AT&T announced that it had restored “three-quarters” of its network, marking the start of the company’s eventual recovery from the problem.
The website stated: “Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service outages this morning. Our network teams responded immediately and to date, three quarters of our network has been restored. We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers.
The company later said it had restored wireless service to all affected customers around 3:10 p.m. ET.
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The website stated: “We have restored wireless service to all of our affected customers. We offer them our sincere apologies. Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not face this situation in the future.
Regarding the network outage, the FBI said it was “in contact with AT&T” and assured that if they “become aware of any malicious activity, we will respond accordingly.”
Government agencies in various US cities posted on the social media platform X about the impact of the outage on people’s ability to contact emergency services by calling 911.
The outage hours had a huge impact on people and left them unable to contact anyone, including emergency services.
The San Francisco Fire Department said on X: “We are aware of an issue affecting AT&T wireless customers when making and receiving phone calls (including 911).”
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In conclusion, it is reassuring to learn that no malicious activity was the cause of the outage. However, customers are still keen to learn more about the issue and what steps AT&T is taking to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
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