AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are down – here’s what we know about the US outages

A major cellphone outage has hit the US, with thousands of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile customers complaining about a lack of mobile signal and internet.

The issues appeared to start at around 3.30am ET, according to Downdetector, with AT&T seemingly the hardest hit. At the time of writing, over 35,000 AT&T customers have reported problems with the network, with that number on the rise. The main hotspots for issues are in Atlanta, Dallas and Houston.

The number of complaints for Verizon and T-Mobile are smaller, but still significant. For Verizon, the largest number of reports are coming from Chicago and New York, while for T-Mobile it’s New York City, Houston, Chicago and Los Angeles.

AT&T has now acknowledged that there’s an issue and you can see its comment below, but Verizon and T-Mobile claim there has been no outage on their networks. With reports of issues still on the rise, you can follow all the latest news here as we untangle what is one of the biggest phone service outages of the year so far. 

2024-02-22T13:55:24.807Z

AT&T technicians working “round the clock”

As #attdown starts to trend on X (formerly Twitter), AT&T’s inundated social media crew are starting becoming a little forthcoming in their replies to frustrated customers (see below).

While the previous guidance was to direct message the AT&T account on X, some replies are now acknowledging that “there’s an outage in your area” and that “technicians are working round the clock to get this fixed”.

The problems started over five hours ago now, so let’s hope that doesn’t mean it’ll take another five hours to fix them.

2024-02-22T13:39:57.758Z

The networks start to respond

AT&T has now acknowledged the issue, according to CNN. An AT&T spokesperson said in a statement: “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.”

Meanwhile, Verizon and T-Mobile have apparently denied that they have any issues, despite reports to the contrary on Downdetector. A T-Mobile statement, again given to CNN, claimed “we did not experience an outage”, while Verizon said that “Verizon’s network is operating normally”.

Apparently, Verizon’s issues have mainly be reported when customers had issues calling or texting friends on “another carrier”. It’s fairly obvious that this other carrier is AT&T, though on Downdetector Verizon and T-Mobile both still have around 4,000 and 2,000 customer reports respectively of issues, some of which say they’re getting “no signal”. 

2024-02-22T13:11:59.647Z

A recap of the network outage

Just woken up to find your cell phone service looking something like the above? Here’s what we know so far. 

The biggest hit network appears to be AT&T, with reports of issues starting at around 3.30am ET on Downdetector – this number has now gone over 64,000 reports, with the hotspots being Houston, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta (see map below). Cricket Wireless, which is owned by AT&T, has also just hit over 12,000 reports of outages. 

While customers on those two networks are undoubtedly the worst hit, Verizon and T-Mobile are also showing spikes in reports of ‘no signal’ and ‘mobile internet’ issues. These problems all started at around the same time (3.30am ET) and in similar cities, with Houston, Chicago and Dallas again being the source of complaints on Verizon and T-Mobile.

We’re expecting to get some official comment from AT&T and other networks soon, as these issues don’t appear to be going away.

2024-02-22T12:50:36.828Z

Emergency services post about the outages

The AT&T outages are so widespread that some emergency services have started posting guidance in some of the worst-hit areas. The San Francisco Fire Department published the below on X (formerly Twitter), stating that its 911 center is still operational and that it’s monitoring the situation.

Meanwhile, an official Facebook page for Powell County in Kentucky has stated that it’s currently juggling a power outage and the AT&T cellphone issues, which are preventing customers from calling 911. Let’s hope both of those get sorted soon. 

2024-02-22T12:36:41.809Z

No official comment from AT&T – yet

So far, we haven’t had any official comment from AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile about the network outages that are continuing to hit many customers, but we’ll continue to chase them up.

On social media, AT&T are acknowledging individual complaints (below) but asking customers to DM them for a resolution. Hopefully we’ll get a broader official update soon about what’s causing the problems and an estimate of timescales. 

Because the issues appear to be getting worse, according to Downdetector, particularly on AT&T, which has now peaked at over 50,000 complaints.

2024-02-22T12:25:42.769Z

The reports of outages keep coming

Our US Editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff has posted about the outages on X (below) and is getting some more live info on where the main hotspots are.

Again, it’s AT&T customers that appear to be the worst hit, with the network seemingly still down in Austin, Western Connecticut, Florida and Texas. There are some anecdotal signs of recovery on T-Mobile, but its DownDetector graph of reported issues is still on the rise.

2024-02-22T12:12:09.281Z

AT&T the hardest hit

Welcome to this liveblog on the major cell phone network outage that’s mainly hitting AT&T, but also Verizon, T-Mobile and some of their related MVNOs (mobile virtual network operator) like Cricket Wireless and FirstNet.

As you can see above from DownDetector, this biggest hit appears to be AT&T – with the number of reported outages from frustrated customers spiraling upwards towards 40,000. The problems started at around 3.38am ET and are mainly hitting Chicago, Houston, Dallas and Atlanta, though many more cities are also affected.