Tens of thousands of AT&T customers in cities throughout the nation who were frustrated and worried about 911 dispatch delays due to their phones losing signal overnight had their service fully restored, according to AT&T.
The FBI stated in a statement on Thursday afternoon that it was “in contact with AT&T regarding the network outage that occurred today.” If we become aware of any harmful conduct, we will take the appropriate action.”
John Kirby, the national security spokesperson for the White House, mentioned the outage when he talked to reporters on Thursday. Kirby stated that the outage was being investigated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI. He said that AT&T was in contact with the Federal Communications Commission as well.
AT&T apologize
“But the bottom line is we don’t have all the answers,” he stated.
“We sincerely apologize.”
AT&T announced in the late afternoon that it had “restored wireless service to all our affected customers.”
In an email to NPR, the business stated, “We sincerely apologize to them.” “Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future.”
Kirby stated that while the outage caused some problems for the Department of Commerce, they were not “crippling.”
As previously reported by Down Detector, the cities with the biggest number of outages recorded were Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Chicago, Indianapolis, New York, Miami, and Charlotte. By around 8:30 a.m. ET, Houston had received almost 2,000 reports, while New York had received over 1,300.
The San Francisco Fire Department said on X, previously Twitter, that it was “aware of an issue impacting AT&T wireless customers from making and receiving any phone calls (including to 911).” However, service outages raised concerns even outside those localities on Thursday morning.
“We’re keeping an eye on this and are actively involved. The 911 center located in San Francisco is still in service. Please try calling from a landline if you are an AT&T user and are unable to reach 911. Should that not be a possibility, kindly attempt to contact a friend or family member who has a different carrier and ask them to make a 911 call on your behalf. To test your phone service, do not call or text 911, the agency said.
According to a National Center for Health Statistics report from 2022, 82% of youngsters and approximately 71% of adults lived in homes with Wi-Fi alone.
According to 911.gov, anybody with a smartphone may make an emergency call or text message even if their cellular service provider is unavailable. Nevertheless, when a caller uses a phone without active service, the 911 call center is unable to determine the caller’s location or the nature of the problem by calling the phone back. The 911 center cannot contact the caller back if they are disconnected, according to the website.
The Prince William County Department of Public Safety Communications in Virginia’s deputy director, Jared Juliano, claims that while 911 service was never truly interrupted, calls made from AT&T phones lacked location data and what he refers to as “advanced caller ID.”
911 dispatchers, he claims, “always verify a location even when we get locations from these numbers.”
Customers in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region of North Carolina was “briefly unable to contact 9-1-1,” according to police. The ability of our call center to take 9-1-1 calls is unaffected. The service ought to resume soon.”
According to other providers, business was normal.
Other providers did not seem to be much impacted by the outage. Verizon said that all was well with their network.
“Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier,” read a statement from the business.
T-Mobile also released a statement stating that their network “is operating normally.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) claims that the disruptions coincided with a solar flare. NASA reported that around 1:32 a.m. ET, the flare—which it described as “an eruption of energy from the Sun that usually lasts from minutes to hours”—reached Earth.
According to NOAA, these flares can only impact high-frequency radio waves on Earth’s sunny side.
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