A recently concluded U.S. government investigation has shed more light on the major AT&T service outage that occurred on February 22, 2024 — and even revealed a slightly embarrassing cause.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) report highlighted the significant impact of the outage, which blocked more than 92 million phone calls, including 25,000 attempts to reach 911 emergency services.
The FCC criticized AT&T for failing to adhere to best practices, such as thoroughly testing, reviewing and approving network changes before they are implemented.
FCC investigates AT&T service disruption in February 2024
The outage affected 125 million devices across all 50 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Alarmingly, it took over 12 hours to fully resolve, leaving many offline during peak hours.
In addition to AT&T customers, customers subscribed to carriers that use AT&T's network and those that use the network for roaming were also affected. The outage also disrupted public safety communications on the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet).
AT&T acknowledged that the service outage was due to an upgrade related to a network expansion. The configuration error occurred three minutes after a network change was implemented, causing the network to enter “protection mode” and disconnect all devices.
But the FCC has accused AT&T of deeper problems, including inadequate peer reviews, insufficient lab testing and a lack of safeguards to prevent such disruptions.
AT&T has taken steps to prevent future outages, however, the FCC has already referred the matter to its Office of Enforcement for potential violations of its rules. FCC Chairwoman Jessia Rosenworcel emphasized the importance of network reliability:
“When you sign up for wireless service, you expect it to be available when you need it, especially in an emergency. We take this incident very seriously and are working to account for this service disruption and prevent similar outages in the future.”
