By Marlene Lenthang —
NBC News
The AT&T telephone company network suffered widespread outages throughout the country on Thursday morning, with interruptions to mobile and internet service, according to the monitoring site Downdetector.
Some Verizon and T-Mobile customers also reported outages, although theirs appeared to be less widespread than AT&T's.
AT&T customers reported more than 32,000 outages around 4 a.m. (East Coast time).
Three hours later, after a drop, they increased to more than 50,000, with most of the problems recorded in Houston and Dallas (Texas);
Chicago (Illinois);
Los Angeles California);
and Atlanta (Georgia), according to the website.
Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images file
The number of outages exceeded
71,000
shortly before 8 in the morning.
In addition, just over 1,100 T-Mobile outages and nearly 3,000 Verizon outages were reported until 7 in the morning.
It is unclear what caused these service interruptions.
AT&T reported: “Some customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions.”
“We are working urgently to restore service to them.
We encourage using Wi-Fi calling until service is restored,” the company added.
[No
congressman
will be able to have Tik Tok on his cell phone]
Verizon said Thursday morning that the outages do not affect its network but rather customers seeking to communicate with other carriers experiencing problems.
T-Mobile also said its network did not suffer any outages and is operating normally, and that the reported numbers of outages likely reflect customers trying to contact users on other carriers.
The outages are even more worrying because some people cannot call 911 in an emergency.
The San Francisco Fire Department reported on its social media account landline. If that is not an option, then please try contacting a friend or family member who is a customer of a different operator and asking them to call on your behalf."
The Chicago Office of Emergency Management, the Prince William County Police Department (in Virginia), and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (in North Carolina) have notified the public of the outage on social media, saying that some customers were unable to contact 911.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said in a statement that the city is gathering information to help resolve the problem.
“Atlanta 911 can receive incoming and outgoing calls.
“We have received calls from AT&T customers reporting that their cell phones are in SOS mode,” Dickens stated.