AT&T’s widespread outage that left thousands without service for hours Thursday was likely because of technical issues and not cyber attack.
By Thursday afternoon, AT&T had restored cellular services to all its customers.
According to the company, the outage “was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack,” it said Thursday evening.
Over 32,000 AT&T outages were reported by customers about 4 a.m. ET Thursday. It inflated to about 50,000 by 7 am.
That number surged to more than 71,000 just before 8 a.m. ET.
Other cellular providers, including Verizon, T-Mobile and Cricket Wireless, also reported outages.
According to Verizon, the outages are not affecting its network directly, only customers trying to reach AT&T carriers.
Cricket Wireless, which is owned by AT&T and uses its network, also experienced cellular problems. More than 13,500 customers reported outages as of 8 a.m. ET Thursday.
“Allow us to explain that there is a nationwide network incident impacting multiple services,” the company wrote on X. “It is Cricket’s top priority to restore service to full capacity as quickly and safely as possible.”
But the services have been fully restored and customers can assess uninterrupted wireless connection.
“We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them. Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future,” the company said in a statement.
The Federal Communications Commission is actively investigating the incident.
