AT&T Suffers Major Outage Affecting Millions of Customers and Cities Across the U.S.

In the wee hours of Thursday, AT&T, one of the nation’s major cellular providers, had a massive outage that, as of 10 a.m., continues unabated. According to reports, the outage, which the telecom giant has yet to explain, is impacting cities across the country and 911 service for as many as 74,000 customers. Wi-fi calling continues to work for those without cell service.

Although the reason for the outage has not been revealed, it appears to be related to how calls are passed between networks — AT&T to Verizon, for example. And while the outage has not directly impacted those on other cellular services, those who are affected on AT&T cannot make or receive calls from any providers complicating communications across the entire network of phones nationwide. In some cases, if a Verizon or T-Mobile customer is connected to an AT&T network, it could cause problems for those users as well.

AT&T has said that its first responder network remains operational, but that doesn’t necessarily mean people calling 911 can get through if their personal cell service has been affected. Additionally, some cities have been impacted by people calling 911 just to test their service, flooding those services with calls and blocking others with actual emergencies from getting through.

Houston, along with Dallas and San Antonio, are the cities in Texas that appear to be most affected by the outage. Other cities including Atlanta, New York, Miami, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Chicago are also having issues.