Treasure Coast - Thursday, February 22, 2024: Wide spread cell phone outage have been throughout this morning by customers of AT&T, as well as other providers, including cricket Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile and other service providers, according to data from downdetector.com.
AT&T has more than 240 million subscribers, the country’s largest. The Associated Press (AP) reported that as of 9:30 a.m. Thursday morning, AT&T had more than 73,000 outages. Cricket Wireless, which is owned by AT&T, had more than 13,000, according to Downdetector.
Verizon had more than 4,000 outages and T-Mobile had more than 1,800 outages. Boost Mobile had about 700 outages, according to the AP report
NPR cites figures from Downdetector indicating that the highest number of outages have been reported in Miami, Charlotte, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Chicago, Indianapolis, and New York
In a statement emailed to NPR, AT&T said: "Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored."
The outages have caused concern about disruptions to 911 services. The Indian River County Sheriff's Office issued a statement this morning saying; "We want to assure you that our dispatch center remains fully operational and ready to assist. If you find yourself grappling with phone connectivity issues, remember that you can still reach out for help by texting 911 in the event of an emergency."
The cause of the outage has not yet been released, however the AP report quotes Lee McKnight, an associate professor in the iSchool at Syracuse University, who thinks that the most likely cause of the outage is a cloud misconfiguration, or human error.
“A possible but far less likely outcome is an intentional malicious hack of ATT's network, but the diffuse pattern of outages across the country suggests something more fundamental,” McKnight said in an emailed statement.