By Jillian Duthe, Todd Shields, Jake Bleberg and Jennifer Jacobs. Bloomberg
AT & T Ink said that a broad outage that took hours to solve on Thursday, expanding the wireless network was due to a “wrong process”.
The software issue disrupted the wireless service for hundreds of thousands of customers and motivated the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security to investigate the outage.
AT&T spokesperson said in a statement, “Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was due to the application and execution of a wrong process, as we were expanding our network, not because of the cyber attack,” AT & T spokesperson said in a statement. “We are continuing our assessment of today’s outage to ensure that we keep distributing the service that are worthy of our customers.”
AT & T said that all wireless service was restored on Thursday afternoon, capping on a day of frustration that started in the early hours of the morning. AT & T customers filed more than 1.5 million outage reports on service-tracking website Doutater.
The federal government began an investigation as to whether the network failure was caused by a cyber attack, according to two US officials, familiar with the situation, who requested oblivion to discuss sensitive information.
White House spokesman John Kirby first told reporters that the Federal Communications Commission had also been in touch with AT&T. “DHS and FBI are also looking at this, technical industries, working with these network providers, to see what we can do from a federal point of view, to find out what has happened here,” Kirby said.
At the beginning of Thursday, mobile-phone customers of many carriers started reporting problems, but it was soon clear that AT&T’s network was criminal. Outage was reported from cities including New York, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago and Dallas. Service disintegration increased communication with emergency respondents, and authorities urged AT and T customers on social media to use the landline to call 911 for an emergency.
According to data compiled by Bloomberg, with about 87 million customers, AT & T is the third largest US retail wireless career, behind Verizon Communications Inc. and T-Mobile US Inc. Both Verizon and T-Mobile said their services were working normally. AT & T shares fell 2.4%.
The effect was felt far and wide. AT & T customers Emma Smats were in Chicago on the Metra Express train. Generally, the executive of the public relationship account spent an hour -long command to catch client calls, pitching reporters and overnight tasks. Not on Thursday.
Smuts said, “I couldn’t do anything from my work,” Smuts said, who had shut down their phone to their fellow travelers and try to catch a cellular signal in a fruitless attempt to send emails or work.
Workmen are ignorant, some send back at a simple time. The direction for the morning meeting of Vanessa Stove -the guidelines “like this is 2009 Maple.” Communication strategist, Sarah Kittail had to join the nearby Wi-Fi of a nearby restaurant to pay for parking.
“Our work and life is so sad or otherwise, on our ability, the ability to reach or reach others on a touch of a button,” Kaitail said. “This is not just this morning.” Kate Luzio, a trip from New York to Washington for a large customer program, was more blunt: “It was a mess.”
FBI employees were among the affected people. In an email to all the employees reviewed by Bloomberg, the agency’s information and technology branch said, “A nationwide cell service outage is preventing some Google Pixel devices from connecting cellular coverage. Some users are able to re -connect the network by rebooting their pixels (press and press the power button, then press the ‘restart’). ,
White House spokesman Kirby said that the public safety network was the only government unit, and the service was restored there.
The partnership provides communication services to about 27,500 public safety agencies in partnership with Firstnet AT&T.
For the New York City Police, former head of the department Ken Kori said that outage in Firstnet has “affected 911 reactions and public-security communication across the country.” Corey, who used to talk via email, lead a group that opposes the first -net’s managing additional airways.
This is not the first time AT & T has faced extensive outage. In 2008, the company dealt with a comprehensive wireless internet failure in the Northeast of the US. In that incident, the way the company’s network was rooting the traffic, a mess was identified as a criminal and the service failure was relatively short -lived. In 2020, AT & T Internet and Phone Service were excluded from an explosion in the city area of the city in Nashville.
T-Mobiles have also been hit with extensive outages, one in last February and 2020 in which FCC inspired to start an investigation.
Edward d. “In my experience, this type of outage can negatively affect the financial results in the quarter in which it occurs and causes short -term lost goodwill with customers,” said David Hagar, an analyst of Jones & Co.. “However, it does not have a long -term impact on the business.”