As of 6.21 PM EDT, there were approximately 5,300 complaints on the outage monitoring website Downdetector.
The outage mostly affects the Southeast, with iPhones going into the SOS mode, per The Mobile Report. That’s not to say the problem is exclusive to iOS.
AT&T has acknowledged the problem, revealing it was caused by a critical failure at a switching center. A lack of connectivity isn’t the only headache it has caused. Other issues that have popped up include the inability to issue new SIM cards and service delays.
The company has not given a timeline for the resolution of the issue and is still trying to figure out how to fix it, suggesting it could be any number of hours before it’s resolved and service is restored.
The timing of the outage couldn’t have been worse as most of the company’s senior technical support staff clocks out at 5PM.
The FCC is also investigating an outage in February that lasted more than 12 hours and prevented more than 92 million calls from going through.
