MACON, Ga. — AT&T has confirmed that users on its network experienced a widespread cell service outage Thursday morning.
11:15 a.m. Update: AT&T has released a statement on the outage: "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."
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DownDetector.com shows a spike in outage searches for the wireless carrier beginning around 4 a.m. Eastern time. Users are seeing "SOS" in the corner of their screen, signifying that they are still able to make emergency calls.
AT&T confirmed in a statement some customers "are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning."
DownDetector is also showing reports of smaller outages for Verizon and T-Mobile from around the country.
Cricket Wireless had more than 13,000, the outage tracking website said Thursday. Verizon had more than 4,000 outages and T-Mobile had more than 1,900 outages. Boost Mobile had about 700 outages.
Verizon and T-Mobile both said in their statements they didn't experience outages.
“Verizon’s network is operating normally. Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier. We are continuing to monitor the situation,” Verizon said.
“Our network is operating normally. Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks,” T-Mobile said.
The outage became a major trend on social media overnight, with users on X (formerly Twitter) flocking to a number of hashtags to discuss the issue. Although #CyberAttack was one of the trending hashtags associated with the outage, there is no indication that an attack was the cause of the outage.
Solen Aref is working on what this means for central Georgia tonight at 5 and 6 p.m. on 13WMAZ.