AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile customers are among those who woke up this morning to a huge network outage in the US leaving iPhones stuck in SOS mode
Mobile phone users across the US have woken up to disruption this morning as several major carriers have gone down.
AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and other network providers have all been impacted in a network outage that has impacted people from California to South Carolina. Providers did not immediately share a reason behind the network outages, leading many to worry that it could have been part of a larger cyberattack on the US.
According to Downdetector, AT&T, Cricket Wireless, Verizon, AT&T's FirstNet, T-Mobile, and smaller carriers such as Boost Mobile and Straight Talk all went down shortly before 5am Eastern Time (EST). There was s spike in reported outages between 4am and 5am EST, with AT&T outage reports peaking at 31,931 at around 4.30am.
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Many took to Twitter to share their frustrations with the situation and to try and find out more about what was happening. iPhone users reported their phones being stuck in SOS mode as a result of the outage. iPhones enter SOS mode when they lose cellular connection, allowing users to still make SOS calls or texts to emergency services on models from the iPhone 13 onwards.
With little information from providers and a whole host of speculation online, we've broken down everything you need to know about the network outages across the US below.
Which networks are down?
According to Downdetector some of the biggest mobile network providers in the US were impacted in the outage. This includes AT&T, Verizon, Cricket wireless and T-Mobile.
Smaller networks such as Consumer Cellular, Boost Mobile, US Cellular, Straight Talk and AT&T's FirstNet network for first responders.
What does it mean?
The most commonly reported issues people are facing comes to sending calls and texts. Some users have reported an issue with accessing mobile data.
While some people's phones have gone into SOS mode, with their network connection severed, others are reporting they are still receiving bars of service. However, when they come to make a call or a text, they find it unable to go through.
How is the network outage impacting 911?
As a result of the widespread network outage, many emergency services across the US have confirmed they have been struggling to take calls. Several police departments have warned people may be unable to call or text 911 while the networks are down.
Flagler County Sheriff's Office in Florida tweeted: "AT&T is experiencing an outage. Subscribers are unable to call or text 911." Other states have stressed that the issue has hindered their ability to receive calls.
FirstNet, created with AT&T, is a network widely used by first responders. It was created to help set up and operate the "first high-speed nationwide wireless broadband network for first responders".
Why are networks down?
It's unclear exactly what has caused the widespread outage this morning. However, many have taken to Twitter to share their theories as to the reason behind the outage.
One user wrote: "AT&T cellular service down. Downdetector reporting numerous cell services with issues. Is this a massive cyber attack on the cellular infrastructure? Was there a solar flare or satellite malfunction? The issue appears to be nationwide, if not international."
Later another tweeted: "Confirmation from around the US on a nationwide cellular network outage. Seems to have affected @ATT first, then later reports from other phones on @TMobile @Verizon and more. I can't imagine this is incompetence or a single node failure. Concerned it could be a #cyberattack."
Within hours of the networks going down, #cyberattack began trending on Twitter, with many users worried that it was no coincidence so many major providers went down at once. Others have questioned whether there had been damage to a satellite or a solar flare which could have caused the issue.
What have mobile providers said?
So far, none of the major providers, AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile have commented publicly on the outage. There have been reports of the networks replying to users on Twitter complaining about the outage, but when the Mirror looked, the companies had no tweets regarding the incident and no replies visible on their Twitter pages.
