A major cellphone outage affected users across the US early Thursday — even stopping some police departments from being able to receive 911 calls.
AT&T seemed to have experienced the largest number of issues, with nearly 32,000 reports at around 4:30 a.m., according to data from DownDetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from sources including user-submitted errors on its platform.
More than 800 service outages were also reported on T-Mobile and Verizon, although a spokesperson for the latter put it down to users reporting problems trying to call people with other services.
Others reported issues on smaller carriers including Boost Mobile, Consumer Cellular and Straight Talk Wireless.
The problems extended from New York, Boston and Atlanta on the East Coast to Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco — and even to Montreal in Canada.
Several police stations throughout the country even warned that people might be unable to call to report emergencies.
However, many AT&T users say they are stuck in “SOS Mode” in which they can only reach emergency services.
A spokesperson for Verizon, however, told The Post its network is “operating as normal” and the issues seem to arise when customers try to call or text those using another telecommunications company.
Many expressed their frustration with the ongoing outages, as the providers have yet to issue any statements.
“AT&T is literally one of the most expensive phone companies, and y’all have the audacity to have a service outage for hours with zero updates being given to your customers?” one customer wrote on X.
“Y’all got one hour to wrap this s–t up! Fix it and fix it now.”
Downdetector.com
Another called it “crazy.”
“It’s a whole outage going [on] in the US and a lot of people can’t text or call anybody, only number you can call is 911 … this is unusual and scary,” he wrote.
Some feared the widespread outages could be a cyberattack, with one techie saying he “can’t imagine this is incompetence or a single node failure.”
The cause of the outages, however, remains unclear.
The Post has reached out to AT&T and T-Mobile for comment.
With Post wires
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