Do You Have Cell Phone Service in Otsego County, New York?
Some cell phone customers woke up to a surprise today in the form of a lack of cell phone service, specifically some that use AT&T and Verizon.
Where's my cell service?
According to downdetector.com, users of major cell phone carriers began to experience outages around 3:30am today. Downdetector tracks outages across the information technology spectrum. The peak of reported outages was between 4:30 and 5:30am.
Affected areas include New York, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, and Chicago. Multiple users on Facebook within Otsego County noted that their phones were out of order. The outage seemed to affect some local businesses and organizations as well.
As of this morning, a total of 60,000 AT&T customers noted outages, as well as 12,000 Cricket Wireless customers. Though Downdetector had some T-Mobile customers reporting outages, the company said that their network is operating on a normal basis, and that it's most likely a reflection of customers trying to connect with people on other networks.
AT&T said in a statement: "Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored."
In case of emergency...
The outage is also affecting the ability to call 911 in case of emergency. On X, the San Francisco Fire Department released a statement that applies to everyone experiencing an outage: "We are aware of an issue impacting AT&T wireless customers from making and receiving any phone calls (including to 911).
We are actively engaged and monitoring this. The San Francisco 911 center is still operational.
If you are an AT&T customer and cannot get through to 911, then please try calling from a landline.
If that is not an option then please try to get ahold of a friend or family member who is a customer of a different carrier and ask them to call 911 on your behalf.
Do not call or text 911 to simply test your phone service."