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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

#461

Post by Reubachi »

georgeplusplus wrote: post #454
topkai22 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airliners crash far less, road fatalities kept going down till 2010, so taking the broad view of were infrastructure is I’d say at least those got better. Anecdotally, I remember more electricity interruptions and plumbing issues when I was a kid, but that could be location dependent and I couldn’t quickly find good numbers going back that far. Edit: While the phone network didn’t necessarily go down, I frequently go…

Not to come off pedantic but improvements in airplane and car design has nothing to do with infrastructure. I think the average person views infrastructure improvements as improvements in the roads, airports, or air traffic control.

They are part and parcel.

In USA for example, road design AND vehicle design is directly linked and beholden to NHSTA regulations and policies.

Infrastructure (IE State route roads) are ever trending towards wider lanes and more gentle shoulder. This is precisely due to vehicle industry requirements requiring more vehicle safety features (and thus width and length), height, and shoulder level clearance @ windows.

All these infrastructure and endpoint changes are driven "organically" by the USA trend towards SUVs, but mainly driven by insurance requirements. Insurance and gov't "make out" on safer/roads/vehicles due to (perceivabally) less accidents and road maintenance.

I can't speak to airplanes, but I imagine the fact that far, far, far more people are able to fly today than even 25 years ago should show that the infrastructure has drastically improved.

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

#462

Post by Gabrielfair »

Animats wrote: post #331

This is a serious architectural flaw. In the entire history of electromechanical switching in the Bell System, no central office was ever out of service for more than 30 minutes for any reason other than a natural disaster, or, on one single occasion, a major fire in NYC. The AT&T Long Lines system in the 1960s and 1970s had ten regional centers, all independent and heavily interconnected. There was a control center,…

This this might have been the reason: https://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=318230

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

#463

Post by Gabrielfair »

spacebacon wrote: post #440
Animats wrote: post #331

This is a serious architectural flaw. In the entire history of electromechanical switching in the Bell System, no central office was ever out of service for more than 30 minutes for any reason other than a natural disaster, or, on one single occasion, a major fire in NYC. The AT&T Long Lines system in the 1960s and 1970s had ten regional centers, all independent and heavily interconnected. There was a control center,…

I’m surprised no one noticed the 502 when attempting to enable WiFi calling. Azure was the source of the 502. Cloud architecture problem.

Perhaps this might have also been the reason https://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=318230

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

#464

Post by scarface_74 »

topkai22 wrote: post #424
jrochkind1 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about how pretty much no USA infrastructure of today is as reliable as of the last half of the 20th century. Just my imagination, or true? And what does it mean?

Airliners crash far less, road fatalities kept going down till 2010, so taking the broad view of were infrastructure is I’d say at least those got better. Anecdotally, I remember more electricity interruptions and plumbing issues when I was a kid, but that could be location dependent and I couldn’t quickly find good numbers going back that far. Edit: While the phone network didn’t necessarily go down, I frequently go…

And tangentially related, it was much easier for anyone to eavesdrop on your conversations.

When it rained, I could pick up my phone and hear conversations from my neighbor on my landline and talk to them without calling.

Not to mention if you were in the same house, you could surreptitiously here conversations by just picking up the phone or getting a device from radio shack that didn’t have a microphone, that you could plug in to another phone outlet.

With analog cellular, you could also buy a receiver from Radio Shack and hack it to pick up the unencrypted signals from cell phones.

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

#465

Post by scarface_74 »

rany_ wrote: post #457
sobriquet9 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, your Garmin probably gets A-GPS data uploaded to it via the app. I think that because Huami/Amazfit/Xiaomi smartwatches already do that. We know this from reverse engineering efforts in Gadgetbridge, but support for Garmin is still new and so there isn't as much info about it; either way it probably works in the same way.

My first GPS Garmin watch used for running back in 2011 didn’t have an app and didn’t have any cellular signal. I put it on my wrist and started running. I don’t remember it taking more than a minute to get a signal.

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

#466

Post by justsomehnguy »

Tarball10 wrote: post #384
DebtDeflation wrote: post #62

Verizon and T-Mo both issued statements that they have no outages and the issue is just their customers being unable to call AT&T customers. Looks like most of the AT&T network in the US is down though.

A theory for the reported Verizon/T-Mobile issues is that when AT&T went offline, all of those phones went into SOS mode and tried to register on the remaining available networks (Verizon and T-Mobile) to allow 911 calls to be made. The surge in devices registering at once may have overloaded some parts of those networks.

Uhm, no.

You don't need to register to allow 911 calls. You 'register' (it's not a regular registration) at the moment you are placing the actual 911/112 call. At least that was in 2G/3G networks, doubt it changed.

There is always some amount of terminals without SIM or without working SIM, there is no need for them to bang every available network in the vicinity just in case there could be an emergency call.

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

#467

Post by [deleted] »

Gabrielfair wrote: post #463
spacebacon wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised no one noticed the 502 when attempting to enable WiFi calling. Azure was the source of the 502. Cloud architecture problem.

Perhaps this might have also been the reason https://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=318230

[deleted]

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

#468

Post by luxuryballs »

james-skemp wrote: post #429
luxuryballs wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cashiers always look at me dumbstruck when I tell them about the mechanical offline credit card machines we had when I was a cashier back in 2004

If we're thinking of the same thing, I have fond memories of those at mall department stores in the 80s and 90s. I think Sears around '04-06 (?) was the last time I saw one of those used. I think I bought a dehumidifier or air purifier. When they started rolling out credit and debit cards without the raised numbers I thought fondly of those and how they were definitely done for now.

Oh yeah I didn’t even think about the raised numbers thing! Cash is still king.

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

#469

Post by drewmol »

rixthefox wrote: post #79
bombcar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it still show bars in SOS mode? Or is SOS just “I dunno can’t see no cell towers but maybe it’d work?” I wonder if the MVNOs that piggyback on AT&T are showing down also. If not, it’s some AT&T service authorization system that exploded.

On the latest iPhones, SOS mode is the emergency fallback to satellite service. It's really meant to be used in situations where you're well outside of any sort of service area but you have a clear, unobstructed view of the sky. Your iPhone will instruct you on where to point and help you track an emergency satellite that is manned by live humans who will take your emergency request and relay it to the proper people.…

Not sure why the downvotes but this is cool I wasn’t aware of this technology, thanks!

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

#470

Post by [deleted] »

dktalks wrote: post #322
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…

If you use Google Maps, it will automatically prompt you to download a map of the area if there is known poor coverage. It also has automatic (?) local maps.

[deleted]
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