Updated at 10:40 a.m. CT with statement from T-Mobile.
Updated at 12:30 p.m. CT with statement from AT&T claiming service had been restored to roughly 75% of affected customers.
Thousands of AT&T customers have reported widespread issues across the cellular service network this morning, according to DownDetector, a website that tracks outage reports. More than half of the reports (51%) cite issues on a mobile device, with 41% claiming no service. Only 8% claim issues with mobile internet. Verizon and T-Mobile, too, have seen a spike in outage reports, although the volume of complaints is less pronounced.
DownDetector's figures are self-reported, so the actual number of service outages across all affected providers is orders of magnitude larger than the more than 73,000 reports from AT&T customers as of 8 a.m. Central Time Thursday.
In a statement Thursday morning, AT&T acknowledged "some" customers are experiencing service interruptions and encouraged users to use Wi-Fi when possible. The reason for the outage is not known, nor is a timeframe for service restoration.
By noon CT, AT&T said in a statement it was making progress in restoring service to "tens of thousands of customers affected by this morning's nationwide outage...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."
A Verizon spokesperson told USA Today Thursday morning that its 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." T-Mobile similarly inferred that it was not having any internal problems, noting that any issues its customers are having are likely the result of them attempting to reach "users on other networks."
