Cellular outages hit thousands in US; 911 calls also affected

A cellular outage early on Thursday hit thousands of AT&T users in the United States, disrupting calls and text messages as well as emergency services in major cities including San Francisco.

More than 50,000 incidents were reported around 7:00 a.m. ET, according to data from outage tracking website Downdetector.com.

Users of Verizon, T-Mobile and UScellular also reported disruptions, though the outage with the services was much smaller than AT&T, according to Downdetector.

The outage was impacting people’s ability to reach emergency services by dialing 911, a post on social media platform X from the San Francisco Fire Department said.

“We are aware of an issue impacting AT&T wireless customers from making and receiving any phone calls (including to 911),” the fire department said on the platform.

We are aware of an issue impacting AT&T wireless customers from making and receiving any phone calls (including to 911).

We are actively engaged and monitoring this.

The San Francisco 911 center is still operational.

If you are an AT&T customer and cannot get through to 911,… pic.twitter.com/TUIEBkqmkI

— SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT MEDIA (@SFFDPIO) February 22, 2024

The companies did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment on the reason behind the outages. — Reuters