Why Today's AT&T Outage Probably Isn't A Cyberattack

AT&T's network outage has left thousands of the company's customers unable to call or text from their cell phones. It started at around 3 a.m. on February 22, and at the time of writing, still hasn't been fully resolved. Initially, it was thought that other major networks, like Verizon and T-Mobile, also had service outages. As most major cell providers operate on their own networks, speculation was afoot that something major had gone wrong.

While an individual network can catastrophically fail, the chances of three separate major networks being down at the same time are slim. It would realistically take a huge solar flare, or a well-coordinated and well-funded cyber attack, to knock out infrastructure to that degree.

However, it turns out AT&T was the only network with a nationwide outage. The reports on Downdetector related to other services were down to customers attempting to call or text AT&T customers. Details on the exact cause of the outage are still unclear, but it isn't likely to be a cyber attack. Instead, it could be a notably less threatening problem with something all cell networks use.

According to an anonymous industry source quoted by CNN, AT&T's issue "appears to be related to how cellular services hand off calls from one network to the next, a process known as peering." Peering is the process cell networks use to hand off and exchange data between themselves. It's how people on AT&T's network can call someone subscribed to a Verizon or T-Mobile plan, and vice versa. The news outlet also stated that there is no indication that the network outage is the result of a cyber attack or any other kind of malicious activity.

AT&T is still working to resolve the outage, but claims to have restored service to the majority of its users. Nationwide outages are rare, though the mobile service had previously reported smaller outages in recent weeks. Users who have lost service are advised to use a landline, or turn on their phone's Wi-Fi calling feature, if applicable. Calls placed, and texts sent, over a Wi-Fi network are unaffected by the current problems AT&T is facing.