Mass outage of AT&T cellular network affects customers nationwide

Over 30,000 AT&T network outages were reported early Thursday morning, according to Downdetector. Reported outages rose to about 72,000 by 10 a.m., with most issues reported near Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. AT&T is listed as the largest cellular provider in the United States, boasting over 240 million users.  On Thursday afternoon, AT&T reported that all affected customers had restored service. The company apologized and added that “we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future.”

How many other providers were affected? Downdetector  reported thousands of outages for Verizon and T-Mobile users. Verizon released a statement maintaining that its network “remains fully operational,” citing the reported outages as users trying to contact “those served by another carrier.” In an emailed statement, T-Mobile also denied experiencing an outage, explaining that Downdetector was counting T-Mobile users who were “attempting to connect to users on other networks.”

What caused the outage? AT&T wrote in a statement late Thursday that its initial review found the outage was likely caused by a technical problem, "not a cyber attack."