SOS: Outage at AT&T
On Thursday, February 22nd, around 3 A.M., AT&T servers went down for more than 74,000 customers across the nation with spikes in Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. Customers were unable to access cellular service or the internet for the day, which frustrated many. This outage affected many at Nease as many students and teachers were unable to communicate and connect with others and surf the web. Despite the annoyance of not having access to anything online, the outage created a safety concern as some calls to 911 were interrupted, while others had no connection at all.
AT&T was not the only cellular provider that experienced outages; T-Mobile, Verizon, and Cricket Wireless all had services down, but with far fewer outages than AT&T. Cricket Wireless, which is owned by AT&T, encountered around 13,500 outages compared to its parent company.
Around 6 PM, AT&T’s servers were restored, allowing customers to connect with others and the internet again. AT&T responded, reporting that the outage “was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber-attack” (about.att.com). In other words, the outage was a human error rather than an attack on the software. As an extra precaution, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency verified that it was not a cyberattack.
By: Meera Swami
Sources:
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/22/1233126300/att-outage-cell-service-verizon
