In the early hours of Thursday, a significant cellular outage struck numerous AT&T (NASDAQ: T) subscribers throughout the United States, causing disturbances in phone calls, text messaging, and even emergency assistance services in major urban areas like San Francisco.
Data sourced from Downdetector.com indicated approximately 70,000 incidents occurring around 10:00 a.m. ET. The exact cause behind Thursday’s disruption remained undisclosed at the time of reporting.
AT&T acknowledged the situation in a statement to CNBC, acknowledging service disruptions and expressing urgency in restoring normalcy. They advised customers to resort to Wi-Fi calling until the service was fully operational again.
The outage experienced a notable surge around 4:00 a.m. ET, peaking at approximately 74,000 reported incidents by 8:30 a.m. ET, as per Downdetector’s findings.
In the aftermath, AT&T witnessed a 2% decline in shares during Thursday morning trading sessions due to the outage’s impact.
Emergency services, including 911, were affected by the outage, as highlighted by the San Francisco Fire Department’s social media post on platform X.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens noted issues reported by AT&T customers regarding reaching emergency services and urged inquiries about service restoration to be directed to AT&T.
Furthermore, the Massachusetts State Police discouraged flooding their 911 center with inquiries, advising users to test their service through non-emergency calls first.
Amidst the disruption, Verizon and T-Mobile users also reported isolated outages, possibly stemming from increased inter-network calls, according to statements from both companies.
AT&T Says ‘So far three quarters of co’s network has been restored’
