(CNN) – He AT&T wireless service It went down for some customers on Tuesday, affecting their ability to contact 911 in the event of an emergency.
It was fixed within hours, and the company attributed the issue to a software issue, but it’s just one of many issues the telco has faced in recent months, including outages and data breaches that have hampered its operations and have left users affected.
In February Its network was down for 11 hours, preventing many of its customers across the United States from making calls, sending text messages or accessing the Internet. AT&T said an initial review of the outage found that it could have been caused by an error within the company and not a cyberattack.
A few weeks later, in marcha data breach that included personal information of 73 million current and former customers was published on the “dark web,” raising security concerns. The data came from 2019 or earlier and did not appear to contain financial information or specific details about call history, the company said. “It is not yet known whether the data…originated from AT&T or one of its providers,” the company said at the time.
Then, in juneanother AT&T outage prevented some customers from completing calls between carriers. The problem was resolved within a few hours, but the company did not reveal what caused it.
And a security nightmare emerged last month when call and text message logs from mid- to late 2022 for tens of millions of AT&T cellphone customers and many non-AT&T customers were exposed in a massive breach. of data.
The compromised data included the phone numbers of “almost all” of its cellular customers and customers of wireless providers who used its network between May 1, 2022 and October 31, 2022.
Notably, Tuesday’s outage came just hours after the Federal Communications Commission announce an agreement of $950,000 with AT&T to resolve an investigation into whether or not the company violated FCC rules by failing to make 911 calls or notify 911 call centers in a timely manner during a previous outage in August 2023.
AT&T Overload
So why does this keep happening to AT&T? A telecommunications expert CNN spoke to believes it’s a combination of three problems, including overloaded networks in major cities, software updates that have gone haywire and various technical issues.
On Tuesday, an outage map showed outages in New York; Charlotte, North Carolina; Houston and Chicago. Alex Besen, founder and CEO of the Besen Group, which analyzes mobile phone companies, said that led him to believe it was a network overload problem.
“To avoid future outages, AT&T needs to increase the number of cell towers, implement advanced load balancing techniques, use network optimization tools to manage traffic more effectively, and prioritize services that can reduce congestion,” Besen told CNN.
AT&T did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ari Lightman, a professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, said AT&T’s response to Tuesday’s outage as a software issue was unclear “whether it’s the implementation or a bug in the software.” the code.”
“Customers are increasingly frustrated with AT&T over repeated outages and customer service that leaves the issue unresolved while they wait for important updates,” Lightman told CNN.
He added that in defense of AT&T, “it is also important to highlight the complexity of the network infrastructure to serve 115 million wireless subscribers, as well as its plans to implement new networks.”
