On Thursday morning, a significant number of AT&T (NYSE:T) customers across the United States experienced disruptions to their service, affecting their ability to make calls, send texts, and access the internet.
While some outages were also reported among Verizon (NYSE:VZ) and T-Mobile (TMUS) users, these incidents were not as widespread.
Both T-Mobile and Verizon have claimed that their networks were operating normally, suggesting that issues reported by their customers could stem from attempts to connect with AT&T users.
Over 73,000 incidents of service interruptions for AT&T were recorded on DownDetector, a website that tracks outages based on user reports.
The company’s shares fell over 1% in premarket trading.
It's important to note that this figure represents only self-reported cases, indicating the potential for a higher number of affected users. Despite a temporary decrease in reports early in the morning, numbers climbed again by 7 am ET and continued to rise.
AT&T confirmed the widespread nature of the outage but has yet to provide an explanation for the system failure.
“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them,” AT&T said in a statement.
“We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”
The company has been actively engaging with affected customers on social media, directing them to communicate via direct messages for support.
The latest problems come after AT&T has faced sporadic outages in recent days, including a brief disruption of 911 services in certain Southeastern US regions. While temporary outages are common, prolonged nationwide disruptions are very rare.
Reports on DownDetector also indicated around 1,000 outages for Verizon and T-Mobile each on Thursday morning.
However, both companies have officially stated that they did not experience any outages.
“We did not experience an outage,” T-Mobile wrote in a statement. “Our network is operating normally.”
Verizon issued a similar statement for CNN.
“Verizon’s network is operating normally,” it said. “Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier. We are continuing to monitor the situation.”