AT&T outage leaves many without cell service in Miami
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Thousands of Americans across the country — including many in Miami —are without cell service Thursday after AT&T and other service providers encountered network outages.
Why it matters: The outages left customers unable to place calls or send texts, prompting safety warnings from authorities as customers potentially found themselves unable to contact emergency services.
- Service was fully restored for AT&T customers just after 3pm, CNN reported.
What's happening: The website Downdetector, which tracks service outages, listed Miami among the U.S. locations with the most reported problems, with a peak of more than 900 reports around 9:30am.
- The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office in a post on X said people could text 911 for help if they encountered difficulty calling. "Your safety is our priority, and we're here to help. Please share to spread the word!"
- The Miami Police Department experienced connectivity issues with city-issued cell phones, but the 911 call centers and radio transmission operations have been working as expected, Officer Kiara Delva tells Axios.
Zoom in: AT&T's network suffered the most widespread outages.
- Self-reported AT&T outages surged in the early hours Thursday, reaching more than 73,000 reports just after 8:30 a.m. ET, according to Downdetector.
- Large swaths of the AT&T outage reports said customers were without signal and unable to use their mobile phones.
- The most reported locations of these outages included Houston, Atlanta and Chicago, among other cities.
What they're saying: "Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored," AT&T said in a statement to Axios.
The big picture: Verizon and T-Mobile customers also reported outages Thursday, but at a much lower scale than AT&T.
- More than 4,000 Verizon customers had reported outages just before 8 a.m. ET Thursday, per Downdetector.
- A Verizon spokesperson told Axios that the company's network was "operating normally" and that some customers may have encountered issues when trying to contact customers on another carrier.
- Around 8 a.m. ET, just over 2,000 T-Mobile customers had reported outages, according to Downdetector.
- T-Mobile echoed Verizon, telling Axios in a statement that "we did not experience an outage. Our network is operating normally. Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks."