AT&T said it has identified the cause of a widespread cellular outage that knocked out service to thousands of users across the U.S. on Thursday.
Outage tracker Downdetector listed 42,000 reports of outages with AT&T at 6:51 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 22. That number jumped to 74,000 reports by 9:12 a.m.
Several customers on the site said they did not have any service, and that their phone entered “SOS mode,” which can happen when a cellular connection is broken. The issue appeared to impact customers’ ability to send and receive calls and text messages across the U.S. Most of the issues were reported in Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Atlanta, according to Downdetector.
AT&T said that it had restored service to all affected customers by 3:10 p.m. AT&T is the country’s largest wireless provider.
What caused the outage?
AT&T said the outage was a technical error, not a cyber attack.
The company said an initial review found that the outage was caused by “an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network.”
“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 were expanding our network, not a cyber attack. We are continuing our assessment of today’s outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve.”
AT&T
FCC investigating outage
At 1:46 p.m. on Thursday, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said it was aware of the outage and an investigation was underway.
The FCC put out the following statement on X, formerly Twitter: “We are aware of the reported wireless outages, and our Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is actively investigating. We are in touch with AT&T and public safety authorities, including FirstNet, as well as other providers.”
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Can you call 911 if you don’t have service?
If you’re experiencing an emergency during a carrier outage, you should still be able to make emergency calls. Any call to 911 will automatically connect to any available network to complete the call.
If you don’t have service or are using a phone that isn’t subscribed to a certain carrier, you can still call 911 but the phone won’t share your location and 911 won’t be able to call you back if you hang up.
Apple iPhones have an SOS mode, which can be used to make automatic calls to your local emergency number. SOS mode also shares the user’s location with the emergency service.
How to use Wi-Fi calling
During the AT&T outage, the company told customers to connect to Wi-Fi to use their phones. most Android and iPhones have a Wi-Fi calling feature that can be turned on in the phone’s settings.
Google has more information on Wi-Fi calling available at support.google.com. Apple has more information on Wi-Fi calling at support.apple.com.