AT&T announced that it has fixed a software issue that caused the wireless service some down time for a number of its U.S. customers on Tuesday.
The spokesperson of the telecommunications company said in an email that they have resolved the software issue, CNN reported. The email stated that the issue disrupted the ability of some of their customers from establishing a connection with its wireless network.
"We've resolved a software issue that disrupted the ability of a limited number of our customers to connect to our wireless network," the statement noted in AOL's report.
The company also apologized for the inconvenience and expressed appreciation for the patience of their customers while they were working on resolving the issue. The number of customers that were impacted and the length the outage were not yet released.
However, Down Detector, a popular digital-service tracking website indicated a surge in reports concerning AT&T outage, which started around 5 p.m, and eventually peaked about 7 p.m. By about 10 p.m., the number of reported incidents started to dip.
In another email, the AT&T spokesperson said that the outage was not nationwide. This also seemed to coincide with the results from Down Detector, which named the cities where most of the reports came from, including Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and New York City.
Government entities across the U.S. expressed concern that the outage may have prevented AT&T customers from calling 911. It wasn't the first time that AT&T came under fire for interfering with the emergency response system.
The outage came a day after the Federal Communications Commission revealed a $950,000 settlement with the company, which would resolve an investigation as to whether the company violated rules of FCC by failing to deliver calls for 911 during an outage in August 2023.
"Service providers have an obligation to transmit 911 calls and notify 911 call centers of outages in a timely manner," Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC Chairwoman said.
