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A nationwide telecommunications outage early Thursday affected tens of thousands of customers, with AT&T customers among the most affected, according to Downdetector.com.
As of 10:03 a.m. ET, more than 65,000 AT&T customers had reported outages, according to Downdetector.
“Some customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning.” AT&T said in a statement to USA TODAY Thursday morning, “We are working urgently to restore service. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until further notice.”
The company did not share information about why the outage started.
The surge in outage reports by cell phone customers began early Thursday morning and appears to have peaked about two hours later with more than 30,000 AT&T users reporting outages. More than 10,000 Cricket Wireless customers also reported outages.
USA TODAY has reached out to AT&T for more information.
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Outages impact EMS
Power outages have already begun to impact critical public services, including people’s ability to make emergency calls.
This was announced by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department in North Carolina. Post to X The company was aware of the outage and that “customers were temporarily unable to contact 9-1-1.” In Nevada, the Ryan County Emergency Communications Center asked residents not to call 911 from AT&T terminals and instead “call from another service provider.”
In Philadelphia, the Emergency Management Agency announced shortly after 5 a.m. that “a nationwide power outage is affecting all city-issued cell phones.”
Verizon and T-Mobile announce normal operations
Verizon and T-Mobile each said their services were operating normally despite previous reports of outages.
A Verizon spokesperson told USA TODAY shortly after 8 a.m. ET: “This morning, some customers were experiencing issues calling or texting customers served by another carrier. It happened,” he said. “We continue to monitor the situation.”
“There have been no outages. Our network is operating normally,” T-Mobile said in an emailed statement to USA TODAY. “The Down Detector may reflect challenges the customer was having trying to connect to users on other networks.”
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SOS symbol affecting AT&T users on iPhone
iPhone users with AT&T saw an SOS symbol appear on their screens where a cell phone service bar would normally appear.
Apple’s support website states that seeing the SOS symbol on your phone means it has a cellular network that is “available for emergency calls.”
According to Apple, “When you make an SOS call, iPhone automatically calls your local emergency number and shares your location with emergency services.” “In some countries and regions, you may need to select the services you need.
When you make an emergency call, iPhone alerts the emergency contacts specified on your phone.
Apple says all iPhone models 14 and newer can use Emergency SOS to send text messages to emergency services via satellite, even when cellular or Wi-Fi coverage is unavailable.
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