Multiple Cell Service Outages Disrupt US
The Facts
According to the website downdetector.com, cell service provider AT&T dealt with more than 60K reports of service outages as of 7:30 a.m. EST Thursday. Service providers Verizon, T-Mobile, USCellular, and Consumer Cellular also experienced outages, but at a much smaller scale.
Among the customers affected, a reported 51% said they had issues with cellphone service, 8% said their issues were with internet outages, and over 33% said they had no service at all.
The Spin
Narrative A
Luckily, this issue appears to have been mostly limited to AT&T customers, who have the luxury of using Wi-Fi networks for calls while the company investigates the matter and solves the problem. Any wider outage might've meant a cyber attack that would have required a greater response.
Narrative B
AT&T, a multibillion-dollar company, went too far in asking its paying customers to inconvenience themselves and use Wi-FI calling. Many Americans are being left stranded by this outage and the company better have a good explanation to customers and the government when its investigation is complete.
