Photo: Getty Images
The top three cell phone service providers were affected by massive widespread outages across the United States on Thursday (February 22), NBC News reports.
More than 71,000 AT&T outages were reported just before 8:00 a.m. ET, with the majority of issues occurring in Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Atlanta, according to the company's official website. An estimated 3,000 Verizon outages and just over 1,100 T-Mobile outages were reported at 7:00 a.m. Thursday, though both companies claimed their outages weren't directly impacting customers, rather people attempting to reach another carrier experiencing the issues.
The cause of the outages wasn't made clear immediately, though AT&T acknowledged the issue publicly in a statement.
“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning,” the company said via NBC News. “We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored."
AT&T said it had responded to cell phone service issues from customers nationwide in a post shared on its X account, NBC News reported.
The reported outages created concern for customers unable to call 911 during an emergency situation, which was acknowledged by the San Francisco Fire Department.
"We are aware of an issue impacting AT&T wireless customers from making and receiving any phone calls (including to 911)," the department wrote on its X account Thursday, "We are actively engaged and monitoring this. The San Francisco 911 center is still operational. If you are an AT&T customer and cannot get through to 911, then please try calling from a landline. If that is not an option then please try to get ahold of a friend or family member who is a customer of a different carrier and ask them to call 911 on your behalf. Do not call or text 911 to simply test your phone service."