Thousands of people were affected by a mobile phone outage early Thursday morning. AT&T It is affecting users in the United States, disrupting calls, text messages, and emergency services in major cities, including San Francisco.
About 70,000 incidents were reported around 10 a.m. ET, according to data from the trouble tracking website Downdetector.com. The cause of Thursday’s power outage was not immediately clear.
“This morning, some customers are experiencing wireless service disruptions,” AT&T said in a statement to CNBC. “Our network teams took immediate action and have so far addressed three-quarters of our network has been restored and we are working as quickly as possible.” This is to restore service to remaining customers. ”
According to Downdetector, the spike in outages began around 4 a.m. ET, with approximately 74,000 incidents reported as of 8:30 a.m. ET.
AT&T stock fell about 2% Thursday morning following the failure.
The AT&T outage is impacting people’s ability to dial 911 and contact emergency services, according to a post on social media platform X from the San Francisco Fire Department.
“We are aware of an issue impacting AT&T Wireless customers’ ability to make and receive calls (including 911),” the fire department said on its platform.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said in a post on X that the city is able to receive and make 911 calls, but AT&T customers in the area have reported problems.
“We are receiving calls from AT&T customers saying their cell phones are in SOS mode, and we ask that all inquiries to restore service be directed to AT&T,” Dickens said.
Massachusetts State Police say the 911 center has been flooded with calls from cell phones trying to find out if service is working.
“Please don’t do this. If you can make a non-emergency call to another number via your cell phone service, 911 service will also work,” State Police said in a post to X.
users of verizon and T-mobile Downdetector reported thousands of outages each as of 10 a.m. ET.
The companies said these reports were likely caused by calls attempting to connect to other networks.
“Downdetector likely reflects challenges our customers were having trying to connect to users on other networks,” T-Mobile said in an emailed statement.
– Steven Kopack of Reuters and CNBC contributed to this report.