Early Thursday morning, thousands of cell customers reported that their phones were stuck on “SOS only” mode, meaning that they had been disconnected from cellular service.
The outages began very early Thursday, but AT&T remained silent until 11:15 am.
“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. Our network teams took immediate action and so far three-quarters of our network has been restored. We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers,” said the company.
Although the outages mainly effected AT&T, and Cricket Wireless, which uses the same network, some other companies were reporting outages as well, but in much smaller numbers.
AT&T and “outages” were trending on X for most of Thursday, with AT&T users complaining about the company’s silence on the outages, and speculating that the outages were the result of a cyberattack.
Some members of the media were quick to dispel reports of a cyberattack, claiming that the outages were the result of a recent increase in solar flare activity.
Many were unconvinced by the solar flare explanation, because, although there had been a powerful solar flare Thursday night, and solar flare can damage communications networks, it is unlikely that a solar flare would disproportionately affect AT&T.
Multiple astronomical groups also issued statements denying the explanation.
“While solar flares can affect communication systems, radar, and the Global Positioning System, based on the intensity of the eruption and associated phenomena, it is highly unlikely that these flares contributed to the widely reported cellular network outages,” said the Space Weather Prediction Center.
Ryan French, a physicist with the National Solar Observatory, also opposed the solar flare explanation.
French pointed out that flares only cause disruptions on the day side of earth, and the flares took place while the United States was facing away from the sun.
As speculation was running rampant, AT&T finally announced at 3pm, that all its service had been restored, and that it was working to prevent a similar incident from occurring in the future, but once again remained silent on the cause.
Finally, at nearly 8pm, AT&T decided to issue an explanation to its customers.
“We believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack. We are continuing our assessment of today’s outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve,” said AT&T.
Despite AT&T’s claim that the outage was caused by a technical error, questions remain about the other companies that experienced lesser outages.
Were the outages among Verizon users also caused by the technical difficulty in the AT&T system?
During the outages, various government agencies, including the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were investigating the possibility of a cyberattack, but they have not yet confirmed whether they believe a cyberattack was involved.
Despite the number of proposed explanations, questions still remain regarding the true cause.
