Cell Phone Outages: AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile Down

A nationwide cellphone outage affected thousands across the U.S. Thursday morning, leaving AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile customers unable to place calls, send texts, or access the internet. The widespread outages began just before 4 a.m. ET, with more than 50,000 outage incidents reported with AT&T's service by mid-morning, according to data from outage tracking website DownDetector. Users of Verizon and T-Mobile also reported issues with service.

AT&T's service seemed to be most badly affected by the outages. Nearly 32,000 outage incidents were reported at around 4:30 a.m., and while that number dropped to 22,000, it surged once more, surpassing 54,000 by 7 a.m. According to DownDetector, 52% of reports have been in relation to mobile phones, with 40% of reports citing no signal and 8% citing issues with mobile internet. Impacted cities included San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, and more.

Although Verizon and T-Mobile customers reported outages, the issues appeared to be less widespread, according to data from DownDetector. Smaller carriers – including Boost Mobile, Consumer Cellular, and Straight Talk Wireless – also seemed to experience issues Thursday morning.

In addition to preventing users from accessing normal functions, including calls and texts, several police stations warned that people may be unable to contact emergency services, including 911. The San Francisco Fire Department said on X (formerly Twitter) that they "are aware of an issue impacting AT&T wireless customers from making and receiving any phone calls (including to 911))." The department said they are "actively engaged and monitoring this," and encouraged AT&T customers unable to get through to 911 to "please try calling from a landline. If that is not an option then please try to get ahold of a friend or family member who is a customer of a different carrier and ask them to call 911 on your behalf." Virginia's Prince William County Police Department and North Carolina's Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department issued similar warnings on X.

At this time, it is unclear just how many mobile users are impacted by the nationwide outage. The cause of the outages is also unclear. In a statement to the New York Post, a Verizon spokesperson said its network is "operating as normal" and the issues seem to occur when customers attempt to call or text those using another telecommunications company. AT&T and T-Mobile have not publicly addressed the issues their customers are experiencing.