If you live in the US and didn't get the call or text you were hoping for today, it may not be your fault. AT&T experienced an hour-long outage on Thursday that, as of this writing, continues (but may be tapering off quickly).
And by disruption, we mean the lack of cell service for tens of thousands of customers, mostly AT&T, in several states. I found out early this morning through a text message from a television news network. The producer asked me if he had heard about this big network outage. He hadn't, and I joked that apparently Verizon wasn't affected because, well, we were talking and texting on their network.
After the call, I opened DownDetector, a decent online indicator of the current status of almost any online and network service. It does not access these networks and instead relies on real-time customer reports. DownDetector painted an alarming picture. At approximately 4 a.m. ET, all major networks saw a large spike in outage reports. That extended to smaller networks, which use the network infrastructure of the majors and which also received reports of outages.
When I visited the AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile websites, I noticed there were no alerts, just the usual ads about smartphone deals.
I moved on to social media, where big companies like AT&T and Verizon often interact directly with consumers. There was nothing on X (formerly Twitter), not even in the response space. Just more happy chatter about their networks and, at Verizon, a post wondering If Beyonce could break the web (a holdover from their Super Bowl 58 ad).
I posted something on X to assess the magnitude of the problem and the number of responses surprised me.
How is your network this morning? DownDetector has multiple networks experiencing outages across the country. However, it is difficult to say whether it is actually widespread. #verizon #att pic.twitter.com/uigDlPa4c5February 22, 2024
It would be hours before any of the major networks stepped forward to acknowledge the problems. At first, T-Mobile said there was no problem with its network. Verizon finally made a similar comment to me. However, I noticed that both Verizon and AT&T had begun responding to customer complaints on X, and it was clear that there were at least some problems.
Finally, AT&T sent me an official statement:
“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service outages this morning. We are working urgently to restore service. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”
The “some” part sounded like wishful thinking, considering that some states, like Texas, appeared to have lost almost all AT&T service.
Verizon's comment pointed out something I hadn't considered at first. A representative told me, “Verizon's network is operating normally. Some customers experienced issues this morning calling or texting customers served by another provider. We continue to monitor the situation.”
What the carrier meant was that when a large network like AT&T goes down, it makes it harder for other networks to do their jobs, meaning calls from Verizon and T-Mobile to customers on AT&T's network were also down. failing. It's fair to assume that Verizon and T-Mobile customers could register this as a failure of their own network, since there would be no way for them to know about AT&T's problems.
So what happened?
Still, the lack of information and explanation has opened the door to sometimes wild conjectures. Initially, because the outage seemed so widespread and independent of the network, customers began comparing the incident to the recent Julia Roberts apocalyptic film. Leave the world behind in which the fall of the Internet, telephone and television networks, is part of the plot. However, there is no indication that this is a cyber attack.
Others have floated the idea of a solar flare. NASA reported a couple of strong flares in the last 24 hours, and such flares are known to disrupt some communications. Still, the duration of this interruption belies that possibility.
Maybe it's a hardware problem. Maybe not.
While I understand that AT&T would like to perform a post-mortem before telling us what caused the big outage of 2024, I don't think they can wait that long. These vendors have already waited too long to acknowledge the disruption, and in our current conspiracy theory-friendly climate, they cannot afford to leave us in the dark for hours.
In the long term, this may be a reminder that our cellular infrastructure is not as resilient as we might think or as we need it to be. Many Americans woke up to their networks down this morning, and this is an equally alarming wake-up call for AT&T.
Clarification 02-22-24: Update the post to make clear that T-Mobile and Verizon did not experience an outage. T-Mobile sent TechRadar this comment:
“We are not experiencing any outages. Our network is operating normally. Down Detector likely reflects the challenges our customers were having when trying to connect with users on other networks.”
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