AT&T mobile services restored for customers. Work continues to determine what caused outage

AT&T officials said Thursday afternoon the massive network outage that disrupted service for thousands of customers nationwide has been resolved.

However, work continues to determine what caused the problem. Customers were unable to place calls, text or access the internet. Thursday morning, more than 73,000 AT&T mobile users were without service.

What began around 4 a.m. on Feb. 22 lasted nearly 12 hours as Verizon and T-Mobile users experienced similar outages, all which have now been corrected and are back to normal network functionality, communication officials said.

Many cell phone customers devices switched onto "SOS mode" which also prohibits all normal, business and non-emergency calls being sent or received.

According to downdetector.com, a website tracking mobile service functionality, AT&T mobile service outages were reported around 3:43 a.m., beginning with more than 2,500 customers affected. By 8:45 a.m., there were more than 73,000 users without service.

Phone outages altered many business and personal calls and interfered with emergency and first responder calls on each network. Most of the outages were in larger cities such as Chicago, Atlanta and Houston. At the time, network users were encouraged to use a landline or other means of communication.

Verizon mobile subscribers had a peak of 4,219 users affected, while T-Mobile had nearly 2,016 mobile subscribers affected around 8 a.m. on Thursday.

As of 4 p.m., most AT&T customers had regained regular mobile service availability.

According to reports, AT&T mobility is the largest mobile phone service provider in America, with more than 245 million subscribers as of late 2023. Verizon has nearly 145 million subscribers and T-Mobile has 119 million subscribers.

This story will be updated as more information is provided.

– A.J. Jackson covers the food & dining scene, along with arts, entertainment and downtown culture for The Greenville News. Contact him by email at ajackson@gannett.com, and follow him on X (formally Twitter) @ajhappened.

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile mobile cell phone service reported outages.