Thousands of cellphone users experienced problems on February 22. There was a nationwidecellphoneoutage that left customers unable to place calls, text or access the internet.
AT&T was down for roughly 11 hours before the company said the service had been restored. Many customers were without cellphone usage from early in the morning till after 3:00 p.m. AT&T released a statement regarding the outage and restoration.
“We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers,” the statement said. “We sincerely apologize to them.” They also noted thatthecompanyisdoingeverything possible to ensure their customers experience an outage again.
AT&T posted another release and said that an “initial review” of the outage was more than likely caused by an error within the company. This release was to shoot down all the concernsthattheoutagewas from a cyber-attack.
TheFederalCommunications Commissionconfirmed that there is an investigation underway.TheWhiteHouse said they don’t have all the answers on what led to the outage.
AT&T customers weren’t the only ones who experienced issues. Verizon and T-Mobile customers also experienced interruptions. However, it wasn’t as widespread as AT&T customers.
There is a digital-service tracking site called Down-Detector where customers can report outages. Even though, it was reported that over 74,000 AT&T customers who reported outages on Thursday morning. That number isn’t comprehensive, though,becauseitonlytracks self-reported issues.
The outage even affected 911 services in some parts of the southeastern United States. Prolonged outages are typically rare, and AT&T said that the latest one may have been caused by an internal issue.
“Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we wereexpandingournetwork, not a cyber attack,” AT&T noted in a statement on its website. “We are continuing our assessment of today’s outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve.”
The FCC is investigating the outage and depending on the findings, there may be fines. Blair Leven, a telecom policy analyst said the FCC considers 911 service outages serious.
“The FCC cares a lot more about the inability to connect with 911 [than other types of calls],” said Levin. “It’s a more serious problem from the FCC’s perspective.”