AT & T stated that its wireless network was back on Thursday when an outage had knocked on cellphone service for its users for its users for hours.
The Dallas-based company said in a statement posted on its website on Thursday afternoon, “We have restored wireless service for all our affected customers.” “We honestly apologize to them.”
The outage tracker demonter said that the outage, which started from ET at around 3:30 pm, reached about 73,000 reported incidents. Noon ET had over 58,000 outages around Noon ET in places including Houston, Atlanta and Chicago. The carrier is the largest in the country, with more than 240 million customers.
By 3:30 pm, the report was less than 3,000.
Cricket wireless, owned by AT & T, had more than 9,000 outages at one point, but reports also closed later in the afternoon. Users of other carriers including Verizon and T-Mobile also reported issues, but those companies said that their networks were functioning normally and problems were stemmed by customers trying to connect to AT&T users.
Some iPhone users watched the SOS messages displayed in the status bar on their cellphones. The message indicates that the device is having trouble connecting its cellular provider’s network, but it can make emergency calls through other carrier networks according to Apple support.
So far, no reason has been given for outage. But Lee Mechanite, an associate professor in Ischul at the University of Syrakuse, quoted the most likely cause of the outage as a cloud miscanance, or a human error.
Mechanite said in an email statement, “A possible but less probability results are a deliberate malicious hack of the ATT network, but the spread of outage across the country gives some more fundamental suggestions.”
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that the Federal Communications Commission contacted AT&T about the Department of Outage and Homeland Security and FBI.
The FBI admitted that it was in touch with AT & T. “We should learn about any malicious activity,” the agency said.
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Associated press writers Zeke Miller and Lindsay Whiteharst contributed to the report in Washington, DC.