On Thursday, Feb. 22, AT&T users around the U.S. experienced a lack of cellular network, preventing them from receiving text messages and phone calls. Later that afternoon, the network was restored.

AT&T users started noticing that their phones weren’t functioning properly as early as 2 a.m. that morning. Even people who used another internet service provider were affected because they couldn’t make phone calls to those using AT&T.

“Around 7 a.m., I noticed that I was not getting any cell service while attempting to call my dad,” Mikayla Smith ‘25 said. “At first I thought my phone was either having issues due to day-to-day iPhone problems, being that I have an older iPhone, or that my phone was simply turned [off] due to not paying the bill.”

The outage led AT&T users to look for workarounds in order to contact people without using text messaging apps on their phones.

“Sending emails was the easiest option for me,” Smith said. “I used the school RRISD guest Wi-Fi on my phone so I could at least send and receive emails. This helped me be able to notify my parents of the situation.”

Later that same day, after service was restored, AT&T reported that the outage was caused by errors in an attempt to develop their network, squashing rumors of a cyber attack.

“The one thing that should have been done is an announcement or way of notifying people of what is happening,” Smith said. “Since there was little to no way of communicating the issue on social media because of the outage, it was very confusing and difficult to figure out how to navigate the situation.”

AT&T will continue to monitor the situation in order to avoid another widespread outage.