T-Mobile customer says Pittsburgh outage was a reminder that AT&T and Verizon remain ahead

Storms ravaged Pittsburgh on Tuesday, damaging infrastructure. The strong winds also knocked down power lines, impacting T-Mobile‘s towers which need electricity to operate. It took T-Mobile three days to restore service, infuriating customers.

Reddit customer Der_Missionar says that T-Mobile took 36 hours to arrange generators for its towers. All this while, AT&T and Verizon were working fine.

—Der_Missionar, Reddit user, May 2025

While we should be conciliatory towards T-Mobile here, given this was a devastating storm, it’s also important to remember that cell service is all the more essential during times like these. 911 calls go through as long as other carriers in an area are working fine.

T-Mobile was expected to be swifter in its response, but instead, it’s accused of waiting it out in the hopes that power would be restored.

The company’s T-Satellite service, which is a fallback option for when there’s no service, didn’t work apparently. Der_Missionar said they followed the company’s instructions and stood outside for 10 minutes but their phone still didn’t connect to a satellite.

In contrast, their friend’s iPhone’s built-in satellite system, which relies on Apple’s partner Globalstar satellites, was better at communicating satellite information, such as how long it will take before the device connects to the next satellite. When an iPhone informed them that they should have connectivity, Der_Missionar was able to send a few messages, but only when they manually switched from RCS to SMS, resulting in a clunky experience.

T-Mobile‘s satellite service is in beta right now, but the public rollout is approaching.

T-Mobile, which once competed on affordability, has evolved to a point where it can’t be considered a cheaper option anymore. The Pittsburgh outage shows that the company is not necessarily on the same level as AT&T and Verizon, despite its efforts to signal that through its new pricing structure.

That said, this was a one-off incident, and it’s not reflective of the company’s coverage. What ticked customers off was the time it took the company to restore service.

T-Mobilesaid that it had “some impact in the area” and it’s network engineering crews started reconnaissance efforts on Wednesday morning. The company deployed additional portable monitors where needed to supplement the back-up power source “at key network sites and redundant backhaul routes for cell sites and core network” to restore coverage. The company also had SatCOLTS or Satellite Cells on Light Trucks, which are vehicles with mobile cell sites that don’t rely on commercial power supply.