AT&T confirms service problems affecting nationwide communication
An AT&T network problem prevented customers from calling people and businesses using other carriers on Tuesday, the company said.
The issues also affected emergency communication in some areas in the afternoon, as people were unable to complete calls to 911 from AT&T devices. By the evening, AT&T claimed the issue with emergency services had been fixed, despite other ongoing problems.
“There is a known issue affecting calls between carriers. Industry providers are working as quickly as possible to diagnose and resolve the issue,” AT&T wrote in numerous Twitter posts responding to users having issues.
Thousands of customers reported problems with AT&T and Verizon on Down Detector, which checks for technology outages at various companies. Almost all of the problems concerned cellphones, while the companies’ internet services were not affected.
The most impacted cities were New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, according to Down Detector.
Tuesday’s problem came four months after another AT&T outage left tens of thousands of customers in the dark for up to 12 hours. In those cases, AT&T users could not make any phone calls, send texts or access the internet on their devices.
Last week, thousands of Verizon customers centered in the Midwest reported an outage on Thursday evening into Friday morning. The company eventually solved that problem, as well.