“An AT&T outage in Boston and across the nation caused disrupted service for thousands. Notice of the outage began around 3:30 AM on Thursday, February 22. Concerns arose around access to 911 dispatchers and general frustrations with paid service expectations.
The outage impact around 73,000 but recently dropped to about 60,000. While AT&T is the primary service provider affected by the outage and their customers, reports also note a drop in service for Verizon customers as well.
Locals reportedly “flooded” 911 call centers to confirm if their service works. State officials urged those impacted by the wireless service outage not to call 911 unless there is an emergency.
In a tweet released around 9 AM on Thursday, Massachusetts state officials noted “Many 911 centers in the state are getting flooded w/ calls from people trying to see if 911 works from their cell phone. Please do not do this. If you can successfully place a non-emergency call to another number via your cell service then your 911 service will also work. ”
About 1,800 Bostonians self-reported loss of service according to Is The Service Down?. The number since dropped to about 800 self-reported AT&T outages in Suffolk County, which means that hopefully AT&T service continues restoration throughout the day.
The carrier with the majority of customers self-reporting outages is AT&T. Verizon is next in suite in addition to Boost, Cricket, and other carriers. Service providers encourage customers to use a landline if available or make calls on cellular data until service restoration.
The 73,000 marked outages were self-reported on DownDetector, so carriers suspect that the number of individuals impacted could be significantly higher.
“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,” an AT&T spokesperson said.
The exact cause of the outage is yet to be determined, but some suspect it could be a cloud misconfiguration due to human error. So far, AT&T has restored about 75% of its network and is on track to continue restoration. While service is being restored, check out these fun screen-free winter recess activities.