If you had trouble sending that early morning text to a loved one today, well, you're not alone.
Several major cities including Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, and Houston have been affected by cellular outages on the morning of Thursday, Feb. 22, according to a report by The Dallas Morning News.
The report said that over 60,000 AT&T users experienced outages as of around 7 a.m. Central Time.
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The Dallas Morning News also reported that multiple carriers have been affected by the outages, including major carriers AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. A look through the replies of the help accounts of three big carriers on X (formerly Twitter) shows that each network is responding to complaints from its users.
However, there is a slight difference in what each network is telling its customers.
AT&T is telling its customers that it is encountering "service interruptions" and that they are "working to solve the problem.
A company spokesperson also responded with a statement to different outlets, including the Dallas Morning News and KSDK news in St. Louis, Missouri:
"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."
Just got this response from an @ATT spokesperson regarding the #outage:
— Travis Cummings (@TravisCNews) February 22, 2024
“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.”
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On the other hand, Verizon is telling its customers that the problem is actually not caused by Verizon. Verizon Support said to a user complaint on X said that Verizon's network is "operating normally," but pointed the finger at another, unnamed, network.
"Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier," Verizon Support wrote. "We are continuing to monitor the situation."
Hello. Verizon's 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.
— Verizon Support (@VerizonSupport) February 22, 2024
*Nancy
The disruptions may have contributed to the early stock drop that AT&T experienced to start the day. The stock closed at $17.00 per share on Wednesday, but opened at $16.80 and fell to as low as $16.44 at 9:33 a.m. Eastern Time. The stock is trading at $16.62 as of the publish of this story, but that is still more than a 2% drop for the day.
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