Thousands of U.S. residents awoke Thursday morning to find that their cellphones weren’t getting a signal. While there were issues reported all over the country, the outages appeared to be concentrated in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Los Angeles.
The majority of those affected were AT&T customers, although users of other networks were also reporting issues (this may have been because they were trying to contact AT&T numbers). As of 8 a.m. ET, more than 70,000 AT&T customers were unable to make or receive calls or texts on the company’s network. The company had yet to comment on what caused the outage and was urging customers to make use of Wi-Fi calling until the issue was resolved.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens noted that city employees were still able to make and receive calls and encouraged residents to contact their cellular provider and not the city’s emergency services system. Other state and local government departments echoed this sentiment, with the Massachusetts State Police noting that its 911 center had been inundated with calls about the outage.
