Thousands of customers experienced a massive cell phone outage Thursday morning, affecting phone calls, text messages and internet access.
Dallas-based AT&T appeared to be the hardest hit, with more than 73,000 customers reporting outages, according to outage tracking site DownDetector. Customers also reported outages at Verizon, T-Mobile and Cricket Wireless, although not as widespread.
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Cellular service outages
The outage affects wireless users in Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles, among others. Problems were first reported around 2:30 a.m., according to DownDetector, which tracks customer reports of disruptions.
AT&T has not yet said when services will be restored or what caused the outage.
“Some of our customers are experiencing disruptions to cell service this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them,” AT&T said in a statement to The Dallas Morning News. “We recommend using Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”
On its website, the company said some customers were having problems making or receiving calls and the company's customer service had long wait times. “We apologize for this inconvenience and are working to resolve the issue.”
Both Verizon and T-Mobile said the outages were not directly affecting their networks, but that customers trying to reach other wireless carriers were experiencing problems. “We continue to monitor the situation,” Verizon said in a statement.
emergency services
North Texas law enforcement said the outages had no impact on emergency services.
Both Dallas and Fort Worth said they were aware of the outages and were monitoring them, but residents should be able to call 911 as usual. “We remain available to respond to your emergencies,” Fort Worth police said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
ERCOT spokeswoman Trudi Webster said the network was operating under normal conditions. DFW Airport was also not affected.
Some departments across the country have reported problems. Massachusetts state police urged people to stop calling 911 to test their cell service.
“Many 911 centers around the state are inundated with calls from people trying to find out if 911 is working on their cell phones.” The department said to X. “Please dont do this.”
SOS
Some users see “SOS” at the top of their phones.
According to Apple's Support Center, if your iPhone or iPad says “No Service” or “Searching” in the status bar, your device is not connected to a cellular network. If the status bar displays “SOS” or “SOS Only,” your device can still make emergency calls.
Owners of an iPhone 13 or earlier devices will not receive the SOS message, but will instead receive a “No Service” message.