Update - AT&T has now restored the network and offered a general expansion for the outage.
Original story - If you own a cell phone in the US (and that"s likely a lot of you) and you can"t currently use it, you are not alone. AT&T is experiencing a huge nationwide outage right now, although it looks like things are improving.
CNBC reports that AT&T customers started posting reports about an outage as early as 4 am Eastern time today. As of this writing, the Downdetector.com site is reporting about 60,000 outage incidents.
AT&T sent out a statement to CNBC stating,
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.
The company did not reveal a possible cause for this outage. CNBC stated that many AT&T customers were calling 911 services across the US to make sure the emergency number worked. The Massachusetts State Police is urging people not to call 911 to check if their phone works, adding, "If you can successfully place a non-emergency call to another number via your cell service then your 911 service will also work."
Both Verizon and T-Mobile have also been dealing with their own outage reports, according to Downdetector.com, but the numbers are far smaller than what"s being reported from AT&T users. In a statement, T-Mobile said the cause of its issues was due to its customers "attempting to connect to users on other networks."
Right now it looks like things are slowly improving on the AT&T outage front. CNN reports that, according to a company statement, 75 percent of its cellular network is now up and running. Hopefully, everything will be back up to speed by the end of the day. However, there will certainly be a lot of questions asked to AT&T about what caused this huge disruption in its cellular service in the first place.