Nationwide AT&T outage has San Antonio customers venting frustration

AT&T’s wireless network fizzled out Thursday morning, leaving customers in San Antonio and around the country unable to place calls, send texts or jump on the internet.

Although the Dallas-based company said it’s made progress restoring service, more than 60,000 U.S. customers are still reporting problems as of press time, according to tracking website Downdetector. Nearly 3,000 Verizon and around 1,500 T-Mobile customers also reported service problems at that time.

Even though lack of wireless access makes it hard to post on social media, no shortage of San Antonio AT&T customers shared their frustration via X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter.

“50% of my job is interviewing people on the phone and checking email from the field,” San Antonio Report reporter Issac Windes tweeted. “Prolonged cell service outages make that… very hard.”

Alamo City sports podcaster Mike Jimenez tweeted that the outage dumped him back in the “Stone Age,” while Axios San Antonio reporter Maddy Mendoza shared a meme about the outage turning people into clowns at they try to communicate.
Despite AT&T’s assurance that it’s fixing the problem, U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, a Democrat whose district includes parts of San Antonio and Austin, criticized the telecommunications giant for a lack of transparency about the network problems.

“I am (very personally) aware of the major AT&T outages in Texas and across the U.S.,” Casar tweeted. “We are pushing AT&T to be more transparent about what’s happening and when this will be resolved — ASAP.”

Some scientists speculate the outage stems from a pair of intense solar flares that occurred Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. Indeed, a similar flare affected AT&T’s landlines in 1972.

Other experts hypothesize the outage is the result of a SIM card database registry issue.

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This article appears in Feb 21 – Mar 5, 2024.