Power failure to blame for massive AT&T network outage

General

Yesterday we broke the news of a massive AT&T network outage that came at one of the worst possible times – right smack in the middle of Wal-Mart’s iPhone 3G launch. Users from various regions throughout the eastern United States were reporting communication interruptions ranging from dropped calls to the complete inability to send/receive any voice or data. According to a later report from Chicago’s Sun Times, the cause of the massive network trauma was a power outage originating in Bloomfield, Michigan. The explanation seems a bit curious however, as some users in affected areas were reporting that their service was working fine – the Sun Times even quoted a couple as saying that while driving together in the same car, the husband’s phone was completely dead while the wife had no service problems at all.

While the bulk of comments were from areas that would certainly be affected such as Michigan, Wisconsin Illinois and the surrounding areas, we also received plenty of reports from up and down the east coast. AT&T customers from as far north as Rochester, NY to as far south as Florida were commenting and sending emails about their inability to make data and/or voice connections. A spokeswoman from AT&T later stated that “virtually all service traffic” was back up and running around 9:00 pm local time, yet we were still getting reports of network troubles well beyond midnight. Whatever the case may be however, AT&T seems to be back in business this morning as reports of connection issues have slowed to a halt.

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29 Comments
  • John Fulbright

    AT&T is being spotty in Austin Texas as well now. they keep telling us AT&T is doing routine Maintenance.

  • boogereater

    I would call all of you at&t users and laugh at you…but it wouldn’t matter because you wouldn’t recieve that call.

  • Mike

    This happens pretty often with T-Mobile, in my experience. And I’ve been with them for 3 years. Pretty crappy customer service spotty service, and basically no alternative smartphone soultion with 3G besides a G1 phone is why i’m going over to Verizon and getting an LG Voyager soon.

  • John

    Ok for those of you that are wondering why this effected people out of the area of bloomfeild Hills,. The Bloomfeild Hills location that at&t operates is what is known as an MSC,. mobile switching center,. that then turns and controls base station controller’s then the tower’s that we actually see,. the msc basically is a bouncer at a bar with a list,. if your name is on that msc data you make calls if it should be and is not you don’t what happened was the weather near bloomfeild took that msc out,. and being a giant super computer type system it took a while to get it back working 100% before at&t let traffic back onto it,. Now I understand why people are upset but how does this in anyway say that at&t sucks if a tornado blows down your cable lines and your tv goes out does your cable company suck for not making the tornado blow the other direction? noone can change the weather or how mother nature effects how we live on this earth.

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