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AT&T hit with nationwide outage leaving some customers unable to make calls

Customers took to social media to tell the phone company and others that they couldn't complete connections to other carriers.
A man uses a cell phone.
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A nationwide outage affected AT&T Tuesday, with customers reporting they were unable to make calls on their mobile phones throughout much of the day.

Multiple X users took to the platform to ask about current service issues, some of them saying their phones were displaying the SOS mode. In response to one post, AT&T said it was aware of an outage leaving some customers unable to complete calls between carriers.

"The carriers are working as quickly as possible to diagnose and resolve the issue," the post read.

Meanwhile, Verizon also took to X to respond to an increase in service outage reports. In a statement to Scripps News, the company said its network was operating normally, but that some customers, primarily in the Northeast and Midwest, were experiencing issues when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier.

The reports on X showed that the issue was manifesting in an error message for some customers, saying their calls couldn't be completed.

DownDetector, a website that displays real-time outage information, shows a large spike in reported AT&T outages began around 12:30 p.m. ET. Then, there were 170, and by 4:45 p.m., nearly 3,200 people had reported issues from locations including Tampa, Houston, Los Angeles and Phoenix.

As for Verizon, the site shows around 12:30 p.m. ET there were 113 service reports. By 4:30 p.m., there were more than 2,100. Issues with the carrier seemed to center in the Northeast, including New York and Boston, though Los Angeles was also a hotspot.

The outage was largely resolved by the end of the day.

The company's outage comes less than four months after its service was knocked out for nearly 12 hours, leaving hoards of customers unable to use their cellular network.