AT&T cellphone service is out for many across the U.S. Thursday morning, but the carrier did have a suggestion.
Many Americans woke up Thursday without cellphone service as it appears AT&T is undergoing a massive outage.
Thousands of AT&T customers across the country began reporting outages on the website Down Detector before 4 a.m. ET. The outage continued for multiple hours into the morning. The outage meant that calls were left in SOS mode, which only allows emergency calls.
AT&T has not said what has caused the outage or when service would be restored. However, in a statement, AT&T did have a suggestion for those without service.
“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning,” the carrier said. “We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”
Numerous police departments said callers are struggling to reach 911 services. Those departments also recommended making calls in Wi-Fi mode.
Users of several other cellphone services, such as Cricket Wireless, Verizon and T-Mobile, also report sporadic outages on Down Detector. Those outages do not appear to be as widespread as AT&T’s outage. Verizon said its network is operating normally and customers only experienced problems “when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier.”
According to 2023 Statista data, AT&T is the nation’s largest cellphone provider with 46% share of the industry.
To enable Wi-Fi calling on an iPhone, go to Settings, tap Phone, and then tap Wi-Fi Calling.
To utilize Wi-Fi calling on an Android phone, open the Phone app, tap More Settings, tap Calls, and tap Wi-Fi Calling.
You will need to be connected to a wireless network in order for this feature to work.
