27
votes
AT&T widespread cell phone outage in US
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- Title
- AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile customers hit by widespread cellular outages in U.S.
- Published
- Feb 22 2024
- Word count
- 115 words
I think this shows an interesting glimpse at how dependent society has become on cell phones and communication. Multiple 911 centers had to issue notices for people to stop calling to test if they could be reached due to the calls clogging up emergency lines. The national news had an Uber driver comment how it was a slow morning compared to usual, likely because a lot of customers couldn't use the app.
I imagine that several people couldn't get to work today due to that. I also imagine some other industries may have had a slow day since they wouldn't be able to contact people due to it impacting work-issued phones. Particularly wondering how it might impact workers such as electricians or plumbers who get dispatched to houses for appointments or emergencies.
Communication is one of the most crucial facets of modern society. We've grown used to instant communication, so those networks are some of, if not the, most vital of all. So I think this outage is a low-stakes glimpse and reminder of just how vital it is to have multiple methods for communication, especially since many people no longer have landline phones.
Since you asked and I'm a tradesperson, Herrera how it went down:
Our main business line is VoIP forwarded to our cell phones, so I was going to use my Google Voice over WiFi to handle calls. Fortunately one of our techs had a working phone (oddly, we're all AT&T users on Android, but his phone worked while an identical phone on the same AT&T account didn't- weird) do he ran dispatch. For the couple of jobs I did before the phone lines came back, I just made sure to update my calendar on WiFi and use land lines at customer sites to check for updates to my scheduled calls.
If the outage lasted longer and I'd had to travel far from our HQ it could have been more interesting for sure, but everything went smoothly enough for the couple of hours it mattered.
Well said.
Also, I have kept my landline for this reason. It just sounds better. Plus, just to be safe, an old non-electric phone. Because they're powered off the copper phone lines.
I find it hard to believe a landline could sound better than the latest VoIP-enabled cellphones, unless landlines have also switched to VoIP
Most of what people consider “landline” are actually voip. The customer modem handles the voip to landline conversion. The old style landline is called POTS (plain old telephone service). Getting a POTS line seems incredibly difficult. Based on a quick bit of kagiing, I found a few articles from 2022 talking about FCC rules that allow carriers to decommission POTS lines. One article claims that existing lines for businesses are being charged $1000/month, and new lines going for $1300/month. If you are in the US, I highly doubt any non business actually has a POTS line.
I have worked for a business that has a POTS line for emergency use. I can tell you from experience that it sounds more terrible than any phone I have ever used. That may have just been a bad line, but I don’t think so.
Very cool, so I guess cellphones utilizing VoIP should sound as good as landlines (since they’re on the same protocol)?
Good to know, I appreciate the information!
I can’t say I am an expert, so take this with a grain of salt.
Early voip standards compress and cut off the audio in the exact same way a telephone exchange does. So it’s more that VoIP sounds as bad as POTS. But there are newer standards that can be better. Specifically VoLTE. Originally when LTE was deployed, it was data only. Phone calls and sms had to use entirely different radios to use the older phone standards. This is somewhat related to the old issue of smartphones not being able to use cellular data while in a phone call. VoLTE was an add on to LTE to address these. It’s effectively VoIP that goes over LTE, and I think WiFi calling uses the same setup. VoLTE in particular (not all VoIP) supports HD Voice. HD Voice gives more bandwidth to the audio in a call when everyone on the call can support it. That is why some people in this thread mention really good audio quality with cell calls and certain phones. With 5g, sms and something resembling VoLTE is built right into the spec. That is one of the reasons most carriers are pushing customers to 5g phones. With LTE, the carrier had to put LTE, 3g, and sometimes 2g antennas on the same towers and make them coexist in the frequencies they use. 2g is already dead for almost all carriers, but 3g and LTE have coexisted for all of the life of LTE because not all phones support VoLTE. Once customers start switching to 5g phones, 3g and LTE radios can be replaced completely with 5g. That is the real benefit of 5g, along with a bunch of other optimizations that improve the sharing of spectrum. Companies are selling 5g with the super fast millimeter wave. That stuff is awesome, but the real benefit is better sharing with more devices.
Sorry that kinda turned into a sales pitch for 5g somehow. I just find it interesting to talk about this stuff.
I’m pretty sure that all three US carriers have required VoLTE capable hardware for a while now. I’m also not sure how widely deployed VoNR is in the US given that most 5G deployments are running in NSA mode (non-standalone—meaning that there is still an LTE connection as well used for the control plane and presumably VoLTE).
I dunno, my last several phones have sounded like shit even on strong wifi networks.
I think there are moments where the calls will sound crisp and high quality, but then you get a bit of lag or volume differences, someone will suddenly sound far away, etc.
I recall my home phone (long gone) as being far more consistent. It just worked all the time. Calling someone else on a home phone meant you could easily talk for hours without any variation in the call quality.
For me, I’ve noticed over the past few years when talking to someone else on an iPhone the call quality sounds like they are literally next to me
That has been expanded onto some of the newer androids as well over the past two years, but from iPhone to iPhone quality has been great for around 3-4 (if not longer - it’s kind of the baseline I’m used to so I don’t remember when the change occurred)
Grabbed a somewhat random article, but there was a widespread service outage for AT&T today. This included phone calls and internet usage (I assume data, not Wi-Fi), and impacted people's ability to call 911. Reports first started at 4 am, and AT&T confirmed it was restored for all customers at 3:10 pm ET. The cause is still unknown.
T-mobile and Verizon also had some users report issues, but statements from them suggest it was likely people trying to call affected AT&T customers.
As a tech geek, I'm curious as to what the exact cause was. They'll never release a detailed report about it, though.
<tin foil hat>This was a warning shot by some state level baddies.</tin foil hat> I'd assume the opening salvo of modern super power on super power warfare would be attempts to knock out as much of your opponent's communication infrastructure as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Viruses are cheaper than emp generators, and a well timed, focused event to remind us that we're not as untouchable as we'd like to think... ?plausible? <ok, I never really took my tin foil hat off - disclaimer I'm just some idiot musing out loud on the internet, though I am a graduate of having watched many random ww2 docs on youtube, so you know, take it for what it is>