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Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

cnbc.com

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Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#61

Post by ssimpson »

softwaredoug wrote: post #55

I'm just curious how we as a society manage the uptime of such a critical service? Do we have laws or enforcement in place to regulate / enforce how well basic cellular service (at least the emergency tier) must work in the US? Just imagining the dropped emergency calls today, etc? (Genuine question)

usually redundancy. but as these companies squeeze more and more out of gear, we risk large cascade failures that are hard to recover from. could also have been some kind of firmware upgrade. anecdotally, the 4G LTE phones seem to not be affected whereas the newer 5G ones seem to be. maybe it was a botched deployment. i'm sure ATT will give us a really well rounded RCA ;)

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#63

Post by testfrequency »

softwaredoug wrote: post #55

I'm just curious how we as a society manage the uptime of such a critical service? Do we have laws or enforcement in place to regulate / enforce how well basic cellular service (at least the emergency tier) must work in the US? Just imagining the dropped emergency calls today, etc? (Genuine question)

I don’t have anything positive to add, except noting that FirstNet is also down. I’m sure there’s a lot of chaos for emergency responders right now :/

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#64

Post by ssimpson »

neom wrote: post #58
ssimpson wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i was showing none with iphone 14, wife had like 2 bars with her iphone 11. i wonder if its just part of the newer infrastructure.

My wife has 12 and nothing, I have 14 and am fine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

very odd. i was thinking some kind of firmware whatever deployment gone wrong, but maybe it is something more nefarious.

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#65

Post by joshstrange »

Seeing "SOS" only on iPhone currently. I got worried something had gone wrong with auto-bill pay since I only noticed after I was driving.

It's interesting how naked I feel without access to the internet. I reach for it way more often than I would have ever guessed, something you only notice when it's not there. Last March my area saw large wind storms that knocked out power for almost a week (I'm not in a rural area). I can work around the loss of power but the cell tower(s) that service my area could not handle the load and/or the signal in my house was weak and I was unable to load anything. Not having internet was way worse than not having power and I ended up driving a few hours away to my parent's house instead of staying home.

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#66

Post by alephnerd »

softwaredoug wrote: post #55

I'm just curious how we as a society manage the uptime of such a critical service? Do we have laws or enforcement in place to regulate / enforce how well basic cellular service (at least the emergency tier) must work in the US? Just imagining the dropped emergency calls today, etc? (Genuine question)

Landlines still work, and it's not too expensive to keep it as a redundancy.

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#67

Post by alephnerd »

ssimpson wrote: post #61
softwaredoug wrote: post #55

I'm just curious how we as a society manage the uptime of such a critical service? Do we have laws or enforcement in place to regulate / enforce how well basic cellular service (at least the emergency tier) must work in the US? Just imagining the dropped emergency calls today, etc? (Genuine question)

usually redundancy. but as these companies squeeze more and more out of gear, we risk large cascade failures that are hard to recover from. could also have been some kind of firmware upgrade. anecdotally, the 4G LTE phones seem to not be affected whereas the newer 5G ones seem to be. maybe it was a botched deployment. i'm sure ATT will give us a really well rounded RCA ;)

Don't be surprised if it's a botched Helm deployment ;)

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#68

Post by arprocter »

NYC ATT Android SMS 'unable to send message'

Strangely sending to that phone from an iPhone looks like it sent, but nothing was received

Calling from Android to iPhone gives 'your phone is not registered', iPhone to Android plays a 'call could not be completed'

iMessage between iPhones seems okay

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#69

Post by teeray »

softwaredoug wrote: post #55

I'm just curious how we as a society manage the uptime of such a critical service? Do we have laws or enforcement in place to regulate / enforce how well basic cellular service (at least the emergency tier) must work in the US? Just imagining the dropped emergency calls today, etc? (Genuine question)

> Just imagining the dropped emergency calls today

Carriers do get fined for E911 downtime IIRC. It is taken very seriously, as a result.

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