Many AT&T subscribers in America have been unable to make calls to folks on other carriers for several hours today.

DownDetector shows an explosion in complaints about AT&T starting around 0900 ET (1300 UTC) and escalating throughout the day, especially from 1300 ET. After 1800 ET (2200 UTC), the number of new gripes decreased, indicating people have either given up complaining or the issue is being rectified, or both.

Folks in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Dallas, and Indianapolis at least report problems making calls to non-AT&T users. Though AT&T describes the breakdown as nationwide, it seems largely focused on the US East Coast.

The FCC said in a note on Twitter it was looking into the matter: "We’re aware of reports that consumers in multiple states are unable to make wireless calls and we are currently investigating."

AT&T confirmed there is an issue with its customers calling users of other networks. Calls between AT&T subscribers should work as usual. Judging by people's complaints online, though, connectivity has been sporadic: Some say they haven't been able to make any calls at all, some say it's limited to non-AT&T users, and some haven't noticed any downtime.

"There is a nationwide issue that is affecting the ability of customers to complete calls between carriers," AT&T said in a statement. "The carriers are working as quickly as possible to diagnose and resolve the issue.”

There are reports some people are unable to make 911 calls, though AT&T said that should all be working as normal.

Verizon said its network is running fine, though there was a surge in complaints from its customers on DownDetector, likely because they couldn't get hold of people on AT&T and vice versa.

This all follows a widespread outage hitting AT&T in February. If we hear any more details about today's screw-up, we'll let you know here. ®

This article was updated during the outage.

https://www.theregister.com//2024/06/04/att_call_outage/