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

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

#301

Post by fhdkweig »

standardUser wrote: post #286
jader201 wrote: post #276

Something I'm not seeing discussion on: What is/were the cascading effects of this, particularly for drivers? Many people in buildings were unaffected, as they could fallback to wifi. But I imagine this had a pretty broad impact to drivers. Just a few things I can think of: - Packages delayed (UPS, FedEx, Amazon, truck drivers, etc.) for drivers that relied on their phone's mapping apps to get them to their deliverie…

Worth noting that GPS does not rely on cell service.

agreed. On Google Maps app, there is a feature called "offline maps" which allows a user to select a rectangle on a the map and download all the street info inside it. A whole US state can fit in less than a few hundred megabytes. I have all the city I live in downloaded so I can go on walks without needed to use my data plan.

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

#302

Post by ianburrell »

Scoundreller wrote: post #291
standardUser wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that GPS does not rely on cell service.

The routing does though. I have Google offline maps downloaded for areas I end up in just in this case. Gotta do traffic rerouting the old fashioned way though. Or have an old-school GPS map thingy in your glovebox. (Also have kiwix and a whole archive of Wikipedia on my phone). I wonder if meshtastic communicators sales took off during this. How’s LoRa traffic these days?

Google Maps does offline routing. It doesn't do traffic routing but updating routing is better than nothing.

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

#303

Post by freedomben »

tnel77 wrote: post #298
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps and now Apple Maps (as of ~6 months ago) have offline maps, but not by default. If you enable and download them for your area of interest you can use a subset of the normal app. I make sure to have this around my usual area and anytime I travel to an area with poor coverage, plus my Garmin watch has offline maps and GPS everywhere, but this is not typical. OSMand usage is even less common.

Offline maps are a life saver in areas with bad coverage. One of the first things I setup for a new phone or when I’m headed somewhere new on vacation.

This is one of the most interesting differences I often notice between users who rarely leave the city and those who routinely leave. Offline functionality often seems unnecessary at best and absurd at worst to the former group, while the more rural/remote the person the more they value offline functionality. For the most extreme example, talk to the average person who lives outside of Anchorage or Fairbanks in Alaska, and they only really care what the app can do when it's offline as that is it's assumed status when on the go (disclaimer: I moved out of alaska a little over 5 years ago so things might have changed somewhat).

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

#304

Post by danesparza »

panarky wrote: post #297
jader201 wrote: post #276

Something I'm not seeing discussion on: What is/were the cascading effects of this, particularly for drivers? Many people in buildings were unaffected, as they could fallback to wifi. But I imagine this had a pretty broad impact to drivers. Just a few things I can think of: - Packages delayed (UPS, FedEx, Amazon, truck drivers, etc.) for drivers that relied on their phone's mapping apps to get them to their deliverie…

Also can't login to sites that require SMS 2FA.

Well ... let's be honest: SMS 2FA shouldn't be a thing.

TOTP or stronger, please.

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

#305

Post by giancarlostoro »

panarky wrote: post #297
jader201 wrote: post #276

Something I'm not seeing discussion on: What is/were the cascading effects of this, particularly for drivers? Many people in buildings were unaffected, as they could fallback to wifi. But I imagine this had a pretty broad impact to drivers. Just a few things I can think of: - Packages delayed (UPS, FedEx, Amazon, truck drivers, etc.) for drivers that relied on their phone's mapping apps to get them to their deliverie…

Also can't login to sites that require SMS 2FA.

This really shouldn't be the only way to verify its you if its going to prompt you every single time.

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

#306

Post by giancarlostoro »

kevin_nisbet wrote: post #200

To everyone trying to speculate on the root cause, I haven't seen enough information in any of the comments to really draw any conclusions. Having worked on several nationwide cellular issues in Canada when I worked in telecom, we saw nationwide impacts based on any number of causes. - A new route injected in the network caused the routing engines on a type of cellular specific equipment to crash nationwide. This too…

> some people still having service for various reasons.

I assume roaming being one of the top reasons no?

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

#307

Post by Scoundreller »

freedomben wrote: post #299
Scoundreller wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The routing does though. I have Google offline maps downloaded for areas I end up in just in this case. Gotta do traffic rerouting the old fashioned way though. Or have an old-school GPS map thingy in your glovebox. (Also have kiwix and a whole archive of Wikipedia on my phone). I wonder if meshtastic communicators sales took off during this. How’s LoRa traffic these days?

Yes, much that we think of as Google Maps relies on API calls made to the backend. Plus this assumes that you downloaded the offline maps ahead of time, which in my anecdotal experience is not something that most people really consider. GMaps does (or did at one time at least) have a neat feature of auto-downloading your home area map but, the one time I needed it, it didn't work.

> which in my anecdotal experience is not something that most people really consider

Thankfully I’m in Canada where it’s not impossible to end up in the sticks with no service.

Chewing through your handful of gigabytes/month of data wasn’t hard. Only in the past year or so have double digit gigabyte/month data plans become cost-effective.

And our roaming prices are extortionate, so for jaunts over the border (or internationally), I’ll sometimes go “naked”.

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

#308

Post by bombcar »

Scoundreller wrote: post #291
standardUser wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that GPS does not rely on cell service.

The routing does though. I have Google offline maps downloaded for areas I end up in just in this case. Gotta do traffic rerouting the old fashioned way though. Or have an old-school GPS map thingy in your glovebox. (Also have kiwix and a whole archive of Wikipedia on my phone). I wonder if meshtastic communicators sales took off during this. How’s LoRa traffic these days?

The "Here" app or whatever it is called did offline maps and offline routing decently enough. It wasn't perfect, but it worked for "here to there", even if it didn't find the best possible route.

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

#309

Post by ghaff »

freedomben wrote: post #303
tnel77 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offline maps are a life saver in areas with bad coverage. One of the first things I setup for a new phone or when I’m headed somewhere new on vacation.

This is one of the most interesting differences I often notice between users who rarely leave the city and those who routinely leave. Offline functionality often seems unnecessary at best and absurd at worst to the former group, while the more rural/remote the person the more they value offline functionality. For the most extreme example, talk to the average person who lives outside of Anchorage or Fairbanks in Alask…

Yeah, if I'm going to travel internationally or if I'm somewhere I know I'll have spotty cell service, I'll download maps. I should probably be better about doing it in local areas where I "assume" things will be fine.

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

#310

Post by freedomben »

nonethewiser wrote: post #281
chevman wrote: post #270

Outage Over Status: Restored AT&T FINAL, Service Degradation, Global Smart Messaging Suite AT&T Global Smart Messaging Suite Event description: FINAL, Service Degradation Impacted Services: MMS MT Start time: 02-21-2024 22:00 Eastern, 21:00 Central, 19:00 Pacific End time: 02-22-2024 11:00 Eastern, 10:00 Central, 08:00 Pacific Downtime: 780 minutes Dear Customer, We are writing to inform you that Global Smart Messagi…

I think a communication like this should include that they are investigating the root cause (assuming they aren’t completely sure) and that they will share it, and state where. Maybe im reading to much into it but it bothers me that thats not in the communication.

They most certainly are investigating the root cause, and probably there's a witch hunt developing, but as far as customers go I would expect AT&T's attitude to be "none of your business." I've worked with many of these types of companies before, and outside of the occasional cool CS rep, their cultures are lots of information hoarders and responsibility dodgers. Taking responsibility for a problem is a good way to ensure you never get promoted.
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