AT&T has major outage, is being investigated by the DHS (Update)

Update: February 22, 2024 (05:53 PM ET): ABC News reports that the Department of Homeland Security is investigating the outage to find out if the cause was the result of technical failure, a cyberattack, or a hack. Additionally, it now appears the outage was solely AT&T’s, with T-Mobile and Verizon both claiming they had no outage today. Here’s a statement from T-Mobile on the matter:

We did not experience an outage. Our network is operating normally. DownDetector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks.

You can read the original article about this matter below.

Original article: February 22, 2024 (8:58 AM ET): Are you facing trouble connecting to Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, or another US carrier? According to DownDetector, there is a major outage happening now across all major wireless networks in the United States.

Although network outages aren’t uncommon, seeing this many of them having problems simultaneously is certainly unique. Verizon, for example, operates on a completely different style of network when compared to T-Mobile and AT&T, so all three going down at once is curious.

According to CNBC, AT&T users are most affected by the outage. DownDetector’s user-aggregated data reflects this, with more reports for AT&T than Verizon or T-Mobile.

It is possible, then, that AT&T is the one experiencing the outage, and users flocking to DownDetector are posting erroneous reports about other carriers. Considering the number of AT&T reports is nearing 75,000 at the moment, there is plenty of room for that to be happening.

For what it’s worth, Verizon and T-Mobile have both claimed not to be facing any network issues, while AT&T has issued a statement warning customers of network problems, per CNBC. This is not reflected by the DownDetector data, so we’re not sure what to believe.

For now, if you’re having problems with your cell service in the US, you’ll just need to wait it out.