AT&T, other cell service providers having outages, customers report

[ZLoth]

From CBS News:

AT&T, other cell service providers having outages, customers report

Customers of numerous U.S. cell service providers were reporting outages early Thursday morning, according to the website Downdetector.com, which tracks such reports. AT&T had by far the most, with tens of thousands of customers telling Downdetector they had no service.

Customers of T Mobile, Verizon, UScellular and Consumer Cellular were also reporting issues, though far, far fewer.

The reports of AT&T outages appear to have started at around 4 a.m. EST, Downdetector said, seemed to be waning some two hours later, then picked up again and were topping 60,000 at 7:30 a.m. EST.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

I wonder how cranky someone is at the FCC this morning.

[WillWeaverRVA]

This is impacting 911 services all over Virginia this morning, although it looks like it's been resolved for the most part here.

[Rothman]

It is time to start the Russian cyberattack rumors.

[elsmere241]

Boost seems to be working for me.

[Rothman]

Heh.  My cousin is a Verizon salesman and he just posted, "Having troubles with AT&T?  Come to Verizon..."

[WillWeaverRVA]

I spoke too soon about things getting better because it looks like the outages for other services are getting worse.

[elsmere241]

I'll keep my eyes open, then.

[SectorZ]

For what it's worth since they aren't media sources I saw this through, apparently it has something to do with Cisco, the giant non-redundant backbone of all of these carriers. Given it started at 3:30 AM, it kind of screams "failed update" more than anything.

[LilianaUwU]

For what it's worth since they aren't media sources I saw this through, apparently it has something to do with Cisco, the giant non-redundant backbone of all of these carriers. Given it started at 3:30 AM, it kind of screams "failed update" more than anything.

See, this is why redundancy is good, actually.

[Road Hog]

My AT&T came back up about 15 minutes ago. Hopefully that is the end of it.

If it actually was a cyber attack, would they tell us?

[Max Rockatansky]

Meanwhile the TELCEL network south of Guadalajara (where I'm at currently) has hung in there this entire past week.  Quite the reversal of reliability, lots of my wife's family were complaining about AT&T outages last night.

[formulanone]

If it actually was a cyber attack, would they tell us?

Yes with a "but", no with an "if".

Most likely, if someone forgot to do something important, or there was just "bad code", or the server room just caught fire, or some high-ranking doofus had a dumb password, the media would probably find a way to frighten people and use it as a reason to run LifeLock^TM advertisements.

[bing101]

https://www.reuters.com/technology/cellular-outage-us-hits-att-t-mobile-verizon-users-downdetector-shows-2024-02-22/

AT&T restore service on their systems according to Reuters.

[SectorZ]

If it actually was a cyber attack, would they tell us?

Yes with a "but", no with an "if".

Most likely, if someone forgot to do something important, or there was just "bad code", or the server room just caught fire, or some high-ranking doofus had a dumb password, the media would probably find a way to frighten people and use it as a reason to run LifeLock^TM advertisements.

I have no idea how Lifelock got any traction after their genius CEO gave out his SSN to show he couldn't have his identity stolen with the service, only to have it stolen frequently. Norton buying them was a match made in hell, a bad AV company buying a whatever the hell Lifelock thinks it is.

[roadman65]

Yeah I had issues today and couldn't get on my carrier's app either to find out what.

[NWI_Irish96]

My AT&T came back up about 15 minutes ago. Hopefully that is the end of it.

If it actually was a cyber attack, would they tell us?

Not while it was ongoing, but at some point after it was solved they would.

Sounds more like a technical problem though.

[roadman65]

Don't speculate yet. Panic does nothing but create unwanted anxiety.  Look at once when a manhole cover blew off in NYC several years ago. People panicked another terrorist attack was happening until reports developed that it was a steam pipe explosion of some sort.

However, I'm sure those rumors are spreading off this forum, but human nature, unfortunately, is to panic in many individuals.

[hotdogPi]

I have AT&T but was unaffected.

[vdeane]

At least for me, it would have helped if they had actually communicated.  The media should not be finding this out from Downdetector.  Because of that, it looked like all three were down for a while.  One can easily be a technical error.  Three would clearly be a cyberattack.  Turns out the reports regarding Verizon and T-Mobile were because of people either roaming or trying to call someone on AT&T (or an AT&T reseller like Cricket).  But because AT&T wasn't communicating, we didn't know that when I shut down my computer and unplugged my router before leaving for work because I didn't want my home network exposed if a nation-state was running a coordinated cyberattack against the country (don't want to become part of some botnet or something).

[Rothman]

The problem in a nutshell:

https://xkcd.com/908/

[boilerup25]

I had this problem because I use AT&T, and I also had big thunderstorms in West Lafayette. I originally thought the thunderstorms caused AT&T problems in West Laf and in the region until I saw it was a national thing.

[Ted$8roadFan]

What's concerning is that IIRC customers were told to use a landline if they needed to call (or something like that); I would guess that that many people don't have landlines anymore, so we're out of luck. Also, in Massachusetts, so many people called 911 ti verify that t their phones worked that the State Police had to tell people to stop calling 911 for that purpose.

[ZLoth]

What's concerning is that IIRC customers were told to use a landline if they needed to call (or something like that); I would guess that that many people don't have landlines anymore, so we're out of luck.

From what I heard, this affected cellular networks. WiFi calling was unaffected

[kalvado]

Also, in Massachusetts, so many people called 911 ti verify that t their phones worked that the State Police had to tell people to stop calling 911 for that purpose.

Looks like phone service isn't the weakest link here.

[SectorZ]

At least for me, it would have helped if they had actually communicated.  The media should not be finding this out from Downdetector.  Because of that, it looked like all three were down for a while.  One can easily be a technical error.  Three would clearly be a cyberattack.  Turns out the reports regarding Verizon and T-Mobile were because of people either roaming or trying to call someone on AT&T (or an AT&T reseller like Cricket).  But because AT&T wasn't communicating, we didn't know that when I shut down my computer and unplugged my router before leaving for work because I didn't want my home network exposed if a nation-state was running a coordinated cyberattack against the country (don't want to become part of some botnet or something).

I knew the media didn't know what they were talking about when they started discussing MVNO providers being down as well like they all had their own towers. That was kind of my clue that we needed something better than the over-caffeinated morning people to get us the correct technical details. I never even considered the data from Down Detector making it look like an outage for the others because of what you pointed out.