- AT&T is facing a cellular service outage in the United States.
- The reason for the outage was not clear.
- AT&T recommends affected customers use Wi-Fi calling in the meantime.
Many AT&T users woke up Thursday morning without cell phone service.
Their phone showed no service bars or showed that it was in SOS mode.
That's because the network is experiencing widespread outages across the United States affecting tens of thousands of people, the service reports.
AT&T confirmed the outage to Business Insider, but did not provide an estimated time of arrival for service restoration or the cause of the issue.
“Some of our customers are experiencing an outage in wireless service this morning,” AT&T said in a statement to BI. “We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”
Reports of service issues have risen on the outage reporting website DownDetector around 8 a.m. ET for AT&T, which saw nearly 74,000 reports.
The outage also appears to be causing issues with customers as other cell providers are unable to reach people using AT&T. Verizon's outage reports around the same time reached 4,336, and T-Mobile saw just over 2,000, but Verizon spokesperson Lauren Schulz said there were no issues with Verizon's service itself.
“The Verizon network is operating normally,” Schulz said. “Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting customers served by another carrier. We are continuing to monitor the situation.”
T-Mobile shared a similar statement with BI and said the rise in outage reports likely reflects challenges customers are having to connect to users on other networks.
Frustrated AT&T customers have taken to social media to complain to the company — or share memes about the outage.
The company's account on X, formerly Twitter, was responding to customers Thursday morning requesting that the conversation be moved to a DM.
Some government services were also affected by the outage. Emergency service departments across the country, such as in San Francisco, have to caution Residents reported service outages and were advised to use landline telephones.
New York Police Department officials Tell me CNN said they were unable to make calls or emails on AT&T phones unless they were connected to Wi-Fi.
An NYPD spokesperson told BI that the cellular service outage did not impact 911 or 311 capabilities.
