Miami was among the cities most affected this Thursday by a series of failures in telephone services that affected thousands of people throughout the United States.
Cities like New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia were also affected. However, notable numbers of incidents were reported in Miami, according to Univision.
Reports of outages began to emerge shortly after 3:00 a.m., according to reports from the platform Downdetectorin charge of monitoring outages in real time.
In Miami, the consequences were palpable, with at least 50,000 users affected. Complaints ranged from no signal to complete loss of internet service on mobile devices.
The situation took on a critical dimension when some authorities warned about difficulties in accessing the 911 emergency call service.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police and the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office in Florida suggested that users who could not communicate through conventional calls try sending a text message as an alternative.
The problems were not limited to telephony alone. In Atlanta, the Police Department was forced to provide an alternate phone number due to previous failures with AT&T. In Philadelphia, SEPTA reported possible train delays due to AT&T communication disruptions.
AT&T, the most affected company nationwide, issued a statement urging its customers to use Wi-Fi calling while they urgently worked to restore service. However, no explanation has been provided so far as to the cause of the failures.
The problem also impacted other mobile service providers. Verizon and T-Mobile reported an increase in outages throughout the morning in cities such as Chicago, New York and Dallas, among others.
Eric Goldsteindeputy executive director of cybersecurity at the Federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told CNN that they were “working closely with AT&T to understand the cause of the outage and its impacts, and stands ready to offer any necessary assistance.”
For his part, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantisclarified that his office had contacted AT&T, who told them they were working to get customers back online, but were focusing on restoring emergency services.
Several experts assured CNN that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was almost certain to investigate this week’s incident.
