Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 486 posts

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

#361

Post by ezfe »

Scoundreller wrote: post #193
mstudio wrote: post #108

My ATT Phone is in SOS mode. However, ATT's outages status reports: > All clear! No outages to report. > We didn’t find any outages in your area. Still having issues? https://www.att.com/outages/

At least they’re in SOS mode. When Rogers in Canada had a total blackout (cellular, home internet, MPLS, corp circuits, their radio stations , everything), phones showed zero bars, but the towers were still powered on and doing some minimum level of handshake so phones didn’t go into SOS mode. If you tried to make a 9-1-1 call, it would just fail. It wouldn’t fail over to another network because the towers were still…

Some people earlier on this morning said they couldn't make 911 calls. I wonder if it was the same issue and perhaps AT&T cut the towers completely pending a fix. Purely speculation.

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

#362

Post by throwway120385 »

SpaethCo wrote: post #352
danesparza wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well ... let's be honest: SMS 2FA shouldn't be a thing. TOTP or stronger, please.

TOTP or SMS, it's just another text password you're entering in that's fully phishable. TOTP just "feels" more secure.

TOTP is more secure in that you can't be simjacked by someone impersonating you in the cell phone store.

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

#363

Post by Y3Jlbmd1dGEK »

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…

I don't think it has anything to do with routing by looking at the comments on down detector. Many people report they are in the same household, and one person out of six (in the household) experiences the problem while all are on ATT. It sounds more like an upgrade that went through halfway, or, considering the time it happened, maybe a rollback that went only half through.

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

#365

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

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?

I've been using this on Android for a couple years and love it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_Maps

You click a few buttons to download OSM tiles and then it does routing. The latest OSM even has a decent amount of stores, restaurants, etc., listed.

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

#366

Post by jader201 »

patmorgan23 wrote: post #355
jader201 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's assuming you have it on and updated before you hit the road. I think it's off by default, and I'm guessing most people haven't thought to turn it on, or are even aware of it.

I'm pretty sure maps caches the data around you if you've used it somewhat recently. It saves Google bandwidth too.

I’m not so sure.

Anecdotally, I’ve made it to a remote destination using Maps, then hopped back in the car an hour later (with no signal), and it couldn’t load anything. This seems to happen quite often.

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

#367

Post by jader201 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #358
taurath wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only takes a few people missing an exit and swerving to create a bunch of traffic. So many people are used to not navigating manually anymore I can’t imagine it doesn’t have a big effect.

I have a 20-mile commute. I used my phone on day one at the new job, then never again since. It just isn't worth the effort for a road I've driven literally hundreds of times before. Do people also use google maps to get them from their front door to their garage? From the grocery store to wherever they parked their cars?

It depends on your daily commute.

If I need to drive 20 minutes with most of it on the expressway, and they’re prone to accidents and there are multiple viable routes, I’m 100% going to load it up on Maps every trip, if it will save me being delayed 10-60 minutes every few weeks.

But if I’m going mostly backroads, probably not worth it, since you can more easily go around accidents, and they’re less common.

But again, I’m guessing more city expressway commuters use navigation daily than you think.

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

#368

Post by sobriquet9 »

offmycloud wrote: post #324
standardUser wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that GPS does not rely on cell service.

GPS on most cell phones uses data connection to download current satellite data in order to decrease the time from cold start to GPS lock. Lack of cell or WiFi can cause GPS to take 5-15 minutes to "search the sky" and download satellite data via low bitrate channel under poor signal conditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GNSS Edit: You can think of it as a CDN for the GPS almanac.

From cold start. Most starts are not cold. The phone knows where it is, approximately, what time it is (within a second or so, from built-in RTC), and orbital parameters of the satellites overhead (maybe without the latest corrections).

My Garmin watch gets a GPS lock in way less than 5 minutes without any cellular connection.

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

#369

Post by rpd9803 »

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.

worth noting that without cell service, GPS can reliably give you time, lat, long and elevation. So if previously you had no actual map downloaded, or an old or out of date map, you'd just get a pretty accurate dot on an inaccurate map, or just raw coordinates.

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

#370

Post by jjav »

SpaethCo wrote: post #352
danesparza wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well ... let's be honest: SMS 2FA shouldn't be a thing. TOTP or stronger, please.

TOTP or SMS, it's just another text password you're entering in that's fully phishable. TOTP just "feels" more secure.

No, TOTP is far more secure because it has no dependence on a third-party who can mess up in many ways (Denial of service like in this case by being unavailable, Impersonation by allowing SIM swaps or intercepting messages directly).

You fully control how to store the TOTP seed and how you compute the value, so it is far more secure.

Yes, it can be phished if you fall for that, but it removes several attack vectors.

Post reply on HN