On Thursday morning, thousands of AT&T customers, myself included, woke up to find the service bars status on their phones as “SOS.” When you see the SOS symbol, it means that the device isn’t connected to a network and only able to make emergency calls. Texts (for me, just the blue iMessages) and emails still worked as long as the phones were connected to Wi-Fi. Phone calls were not working. I first noticed what was going on about 10 minutes before I had to leave to take my kids to school and initially thought it was a “me” thing. So, I restarted my phone. When service didn’t come back up by the time we left, I realized that it was an AT&T thing.
Turns out, it was not just a small AT&T thing! It was a nationwide outage that caused a huge headache for customers across the US. The outages were first reported around 4:00 a.m. ET and weren’t fully restored until a little bit after 3:00 p.m. ET. AT&T released a statement to announce that the problem had been fixed, but initially didn’t disclose a solid reason for it other than “our bad.”
AT&T’s network went down for many of its customers across the United States Thursday morning, leaving customers unable to place calls, text or access the internet. By a little after 3 pm ET, roughly 11 hours after reports of the outage first emerged, the company said that it had restored service to all impacted customers.
“We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them,” AT&T said in a statement. The company added that it is “taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future.”
Later on Thursday, AT&T said an “initial review” of the outage found it may have been caused by an error within the company and not a cyberattack. The Federal Communications Commission confirmed Thursday afternoon that it is investigating the outage. The White House says federal agencies are in touch with AT&T about network outages but that it doesn’t have all the answers yet on what exactly led to the interruptions.
Although Verizon and T-Mobile customers reported some network outages, too, they appeared far less widespread. T-Mobile and Verizon said their networks were unaffected by AT&T’s service outage and customers reporting outages may have been unable to reach customers who use AT&T.
Thursday morning, more than 74,000 AT&T customers reported outages on digital-service tracking site DownDetector, with service disruptions beginning around 4 am ET. That’s not a comprehensive number: It tracks only self-reported outages. Reports had been rising steadily throughout the morning but leveled off in the 9 am ET hour. By 12:30 pm ET, the DownDetector data showed some 25,000 AT&T customers still reporting outages. By 2 pm ET, fewer than 5,000 customers were still reporting issues.
Earlier Thursday, AT&T acknowledged that it had a widespread outage but did not provide a reason for the system failure.
“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them,” AT&T said in a statement at 11:15 am ET. “We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”
To set up Wi-Fi calling, users can go to their Settings app on their phone. iPhone users should tap “Cellular” and Android users should click “Connection” and then users will be prompted to turn on the Wi-Fi calling feature. AT&T says on its website that there is no extra cost for this feature. Once set up, Wi-Fi calling works automatically when you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network that you choose.
By late morning, AT&T said most of its network was back online, and it confirmed Thursday afternoon that service was fully restored.
I actually did not know that bit about having to turn on Wi-Fi calling! That’s good to know in the future. For me, service turned on just after 11:00 a.m., but Mr. Rosie didn’t get cellular back until an hour later. I know there’s absolutely a case to be made about how we’re all too reliant on our cell phones and devices, but it was still annoying. It was also a wee bit unnerving when I did get to Wi-Fi and saw that Leave the World Behind was trending, ha! I actually ended up taking advantage of the situation and going for a five-mile, Internet-free hike through a state park that’s by our school. I must admit that after I got over the need to compulsively check my email, it was really nice to be forced to unplug. I should do that (by choice) more often.
Note by Celebitchy: AT&T has since blamed the outage on a software update.
They done walked AT&T down 😳 buddy just work there 😭 pic.twitter.com/IjAePm5KFj
— JP (@lostfilesjp) February 22, 2024
photos are screenshots of AT&T commercials on YouTube featuring actress Milana Vayntrub, aka Lily from AT&T
Every time I hear about one of these huge companies having outages, I think it’s a cyberattack. I thought that when Delta had computer crashes a couple of years ago now? I guess everyone else thinks that too so now the companies are going out of their way to say it’s not a cyberattack.
AT&T customer here… I don’t have them for WiFi though so I was able to use my cell phone. I hope it wasn’t a cyber attack!
I didn’t read the article. But I swear I saw something about this a couple of days before it happened. Which should mean they knew something was going to happen when they did the update. Just didn’t know how big it would turn out to be.
I wound up having to spend $11 on an Uber (that I requested from my house that had Wifi!) to get to work yesterday because my bus pass is in my Apple Wallet and wouldn’t be able to update without network access. And then the service came back on when I was halfway to work. So that was fun. T-Mobile and Verizon also had outages, but theirs were shorter and affected a much smaller number of customers.
Ugh, that sucks. I’m so sorry you had to do that!
yeah, I think its really easy for people to be kind of breezy about this and say things like “oh no, you had to go without facebook for 4 hours hours!”
but people are reliant on their phones for so much more than just social media – transportation (what if you hadn’t been at home and couldn’t use Wifi for the uber?), payment options, health – I had a friend on FB remark that one of her surgeons (she’s at a hospital) couldn’t be called in bc his phone was on AT&T – and so on and so forth.
We depend on our phones for so much and there’s a lot of convenience to that, but this is a one of the big downsides to it.
Something weird- I don’t use AT&T, but Wednesday night (before the big AT&T outage), I was out at a restaurant playing a trivia game where one person from each team enters the answer on their phone and it all submits to the host up front. All of a sudden, a LOT of cop cars drove past, sirens and lights flashing, and then everyone lost service all at once. People were trying to submit the halftime bonus answers and suddenly ALL the phones were on SOS. Everybody slowly came back online in the next several minutes, but the second half was a little delayed while we made sure everybody could sill play, and we were all wondering about the strange timing of the cops and the outage. And then the nationwide AT&T blackout the next morning! Things that make you go hmmmm…
edited to add: location 2hrs from DC
@FancyPants, that is SUPER weird. I wonder what was going on. Thank you for sharing!
I’m traveling in Europe, and my AT&T phone didn’t work either. It didn’t say SOS, it just wouldn’t connect to any of the local networks. It made navigation to my meeting a real challenge. What really bothers me is that AT&T hasn’t sent any apology message about it, not even now. They should apologize, explain, and offer a discount. They are already WAY overpriced and have terrible customer service. Corporations have too much power in the U.S. They just don’t care.
When my phone wants me to do everything with an app…turn on my car, pay at the grocery store, check out books at the library, so I only have to carry my phone and nothing else…I think, is it really safe to put all the important things on one electronic device? Yesterday AT&T proved me right! Hah! I’m not a dinosaur after all.
Our reliance on technology and digital records makes me really nervous. There is a reason I still get paper bank statements, and keep backup paper maps in my car, along with a piece of paper with important phone numbers and addresses. And yes, I still carry (and use) cash. All my younger friends think I’m ridiculous for not having a Venmo account.
Then, the other day, I caught a guy on YouTube who was asked what he always carries in case of emergencies. He is ex-CIA, and I’m sure the dude asking was expecting some sort of doomsday prepper list of survival gear and weapons. Instead it was $100 in cash (small bills), a small laminated card with 5 phone numbers, and he always wears shoes with laces in case he has to walk (or run) out of whatever trouble he finds himself in. I feel much better about my choices now.
I deeply resent having to do everything through my phone. Most apps are just irritation, not improvement. Endless “paperwork” with tiny numbers, only it’s not paper just a stupid phone.