The massive outage that knocked out cellphone service for tens of thousands of AT&T users for hours Thursday was likely caused by a glitch in a software update — as viral photos show helpless AT&T store workers being harassed by angry customers.
AT&T blamed the large-scale service disruption that impacted more than 70,000 users across the US and parts of Canada at its peak on an unspecified coding error and not on a cyberattack, as widely feared.
“Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network,” the carrier said in a statement late Thursday.
The “incorrect process in question” reportedly related to a software update gone awry, according to preliminary information from two sources familiar with the matter who spoke to ABC News on condition of anonymity.
The outage that left customers unable to make calls or send text messages was not caused by a malicious external actor, one of the outlet’s sources said.
