Cellular blackouts and service interruptions have been reported by thousands of people in several U.S. cities.
The biggest U.S. phone company, AT&T, was hit the hardest, but all phone companies were hit, including Verizon, TMobile, and AT&T. A lot of businesses said that the trouble wasn’t with their networks.
By 7 a.m. on the East Coast, more than 50,000 users had reported service outages and other problems. Big towns in the U.S. like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston had huge power outages.
AT&T said by noon that 75% of its network was back up and running, but the Federal Communications Commission and AT&T are both being investigated by the FCC with help from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
The San Francisco Fire Department says that the outages and delays made it harder for people to get in touch with emergency services. In a statement, they said, “We are aware of a problem that is stopping AT&T wireless customers from making or receiving phone calls.”
Many of the people who were hurt by the outages vented their anger on social media sites like X. Someone wrote, “The #attoutage is making it hard for people to make a living.” My dad drives for Uber and can’t make money until his cell phone works. Are you going to give people their money back, @ATT?”
Politicians were also interested. A White House spokesman, John Kirby, said, “We are being told AT&T has no reason to think this was a cyber or security incident.” But the truth is that we don’t know everything.
