AT&T says cell service fully restored after major outage disrupts its mobile network (2024)

Sitting outside AT&T’s Dallas headquarters in the company’s signature Discovery District, small business owner Roxie Reese had a moment to reflect on the disruptive morning she and thousands of other wireless customers nationwide awoke to Thursday.

Reese had a morning appointment and grabbed her cellphone in a rush.

“I didn’t realize until after I left my house that I had no service,” said Reese, owner and founder of DFW Lash University. “I made it to my destination but I didn’t know where I was going. So it made me run behind. It’s a reminder that phones are a resource I take for granted because when it’s not available, it definitely makes life harder.”

Shortly after 2 p.m. Thursday, AT&T said it had fully restored wireless service to all customers, including the critical FirstNet network used by emergency services nationally. The FBI and U.S. Department of Homeland Security were reported to be investigating why wireless subscribers lost service.

“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,” the telecommunications giant said in a statement to The Dallas Morning News.

Reports of outages to AT&T’s mobile service started around 2 a.m. and meant many Americans were unable to place calls, send texts or access the internet when they awoke. By 8:15 a.m. Dallas time, over 73,000 AT&T customers in major cities like Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta and Chicago had reported cellular outages to Downdetector.com, a website that tracks service problems by users.

In all, AT&T customers filed over 1.5 million outage reports on Downdetector.

The problem even cascaded to other cellular carriers whose customers were believed to be trying to reach AT&T users.

Lea en español: Caída de la red de AT&T; también hay afectados con Verizon, T-Mobile y Cricket

AT&T did not provide a reason for the system failure.

At the White House, national security spokesman John Kirby played down the possibility of a cyberattack.

”Right now, we’re being told that AT&T has no reason to think that this was a cybersecurity incident,” he told reporters at midday. “But … we won’t know until an investigation has been completed. It’s good that the vast majority of customers have had their service restored. Obviously, we’ve got to do spade work to figure out what happened.”

Bloomberg reported the federal government is investigating whether the outage was caused by a cyberattack, citing two anonymous U.S. officials familiar with the situation.

Kristen Hanich, director of research at Addison-based research firm Parks Associates, said any number of potential issues could have been the cause.

“It could be anything from authentication issues to hardware failure or cloud configuration errors or cyber or other reasons,” she said. “Time will tell, and we are closely monitoring the story.”

Texas cities appeared to be particularly hard hit.

AT&T is the dominant wireless carrier in Texas, with 34% of the market, according to Parks Associates. Nationally, AT&T ranks third behind Verizon and T-Mobile with a 22% market share. It has about 87 million wireless subscribers.

Besides the consumer impact, AT&T’s emergency response network, FirstNet, also suffered disruptions. CNN reported AT&T’s network had seen sporadic outages over the previous few days, including a temporary 911 outage in some parts of the southeastern U.S. Several local governments around the U.S. said Thursday’s outage disrupted services.

San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management said in a statement on X, Thursday morning its 911 center remained operational but that many AT&T customers were unable to reach the emergency line because of the outages. It suggested people call from a landline or find someone with a rival’s service to dial 911.

The outage didn’t have a major impact on North Texas police departments.

“The Dallas Police Department is aware of the reported outage and is monitoring the situation,” the department said in a statement. “The department has not been impacted by the reported outage.”

The department’s 911 communications and other systems were functional, the statement said.

Fort Worth police said on X that its 911 call center also wasn’t affected

“We are still available for your emergency needs,” its post said.

Frisco police advised residents that even if a cellphone is showing SOS, it should still be able to call 911.

Matt Zavadsky, a spokesperson with MedStar, which provides emergency medical services to Fort Worth and surrounding areas, said the organization’s FirstNet system “became intermittent/non-functional” about 2:30 a.m. That caused MedStar to lose the ability to see its units on its computer system and it couldn’t use automated navigation to calls.

During that time, MedStar used radio dispatching and map books in the ambulances instead.

Other major entities in North Texas and across the state reported normal operations Thursday. ERCOT spokeswoman Trudi Webster said the state’s electric grid was operating normally.

DFW International Airport and Dallas Love Field also saw no impact. Autonomous trucking companies Aurora and Kodiak and public hospital system, Parkland Health, reported no disruptions as well.

Some retailers seemingly anticipated such a problem.

H-E-B spokeswoman Mabrie Jackson said the popular grocery store’s point of sales systems don’t depend on WiFi, but store employees were sent outside to curbside pickup spaces to help customers whose cell phones were inoperable.

Other carriers besides AT&T were affected. Cricket Wireless had over 11,000 outages, Downdetector.com reported. Verizon had about 3,000 outages and T-Mobile more than 1,000. Boost Mobile had about 450 outages.

Verizon and T-Mobile both reported their users encountered difficulties trying to connect with customers on affected networks.

“We did not experience an outage,” T-Mobile said in a statement. “Our network is operating normally.”

User reports on Downdetector about a T-Mobile outage, the company added, “is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks.”

Verizon said it also was unaffected.

“Verizon’s network is operating normally,” Verizon told CNN in a statement. “Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier. We are continuing to monitor the situation.”

Previous outages

It’s not the first time AT&T has suffered a widespread outage. In 2008, the company dealt with an extensive wireless internet failure in the U.S. Northeast. In that incident, a glitch in the way the company’s network was routing traffic was identified as the culprit and the service failure was relatively short-lived.

In 2020, AT&T internet and phone service was knocked out in Nashville by an explosion in the city’s downtown area.

T-Mobile also has been hit with widespread outages, including one last February and one in 2020 that prompted the FCC to launch an investigation.

“In my experience, this type of outage can negatively impact financial results in the quarter in which it occurs and cause short-term lost goodwill with customers,” David Heger, an analyst at Edward D. Jones & Co., said in an email. “However, it does not have a longer term impact on the business.”

Bloomberg Intelligence analysts John Butler and Hunter Sacco wrote in a note that AT&T could take a reputational hit from the outage. “... Network reliability likely plays a big role in customers’ choice of a provider,” they wrote.

Wire reports and staff writers Alexandra Skores, Marin Wolf, Amber Gaudet and editor Chuck Lindell contributed to this report.