The head of the U.S. communications regulator said T-Mobile’s nationwide, hours-long outage Monday was “unacceptable” and that the Federal Communications Commission will investigate.
T-Mobile, one of the country’s three largest cellphone service providers, said it had a “voice and text wireless issue” that began around noon EDT Monday. The company said at 1 a.m. Tuesday that all problems should be resolved.
The company blamed an internet-traffic issue that caused problems with its network for the outage.
AT&T and Verizon both said their networks were operating normally. But calls between their customers and T-Mobile customers could have run into trouble because of T-Mobile’s issues, creating the impression of a widespread communications failure.
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The FCC has fined telecom companies in the past for network outages. T-Mobile paid a $17.5 million fine for two nationwide service outages on the same day in August 2014, which together lasted three hours and prevented customers from being able to call 911.
Public-safety officials were worried about lack of access to 911 on Monday as well. For example, the Redmond, Washington, police department tweeted that T-Mobile customers should have “an alternate plan in place in the event you need to call 911.”
T-Mobile became one of the country’s largest carriers, along with AT&T and Verizon, after buying rival Sprint. The company has started integrating the two networks.
Down Detector tracks problem
T-Mobile and other providers were inundated with reports of outages affecting thousands of customers, according to service tracking site Down Detector. Problems started Monday aftrenoon, according to service tracking site Down Detector.
“After our teams got things working last night, we recommend a quick device restart (power it all the way off and back on) to make sure you have a fresh network connection,” T-Mobile tweeted.
Problems started Monday aftrenoon.
Down Detector tracked outages and service problems across numerous carriers.
A check of the website’s reports early Tuesday revelaed that most carriers were returning to more normal levels of service although Cox, Comcast and Century Link had problems around 2 a.m.
People on Twitter complained that calls were not going through. The Redmond, Washington, police department tweeted that T-Mobile customers should have “an alternate plan in place in the event you need to call 911.”
