== Large-scale cellular phone outage hits users across the US

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Large swathes of the US were hit by a cellular phone outage early on Thursday, with thousands of users reporting disruptions with the services offered by telecom firms including AT&T, affecting calls and text messages and even emergency service calls in major cities including San Francisco.

More than 50,000 incidents were reported around 7am US eastern time, according to data from the outage tracking website Downdetector.com.

Users of Verizon, T-Mobile and UScellular also reported disruptions, though the outage with the services was much smaller than AT&T, according to Downdetector.

Cities where most users were affected included San Francisco, Houston and Chicago, the website showed.

The companies did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment on the reason behind the outages.

A post on social media platform X from the San Francisco fire department said the outage was affecting people’s ability to reach emergency services by dialing 911.

“We are aware of an issue impacting AT&T wireless customers from making and receiving any phone calls (including to 911),” the fire department said on the platform formerly known as Twitter, adding that it was “actively engaged and monitoring this”.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/feb/22/phone-outage-us