Cincinnati (WKRC) – What may have caused thousands, if not millions, of individuals to lose their cell phone service on Thursday is beginning to become clearer to us.
The outages began just after three in the morning and swiftly extended to the majority of the nation’s largest cities.
Conspiracy theories on everything from solar flares to Russian hackers are trending on social media.
An expert who spent decades constructing networks for the majority of the big carriers was interviewed by Local 12. He claims to know what caused the outage with some degree of certainty.
“Software errors are typically the result of human error,” electrical engineer Bill Levitan stated. “Something that was overlooked or ineffective.”
According to Levitan, the issue most likely stems from the next big development being released a little too soon. These rollouts usually occur around approximately three in the morning Eastern Time, which is after midnight on the West Coast but before the East Coast’s business hours.
“I think that when AT&T switched to 5G Advanced, something went awry, which is probably why everything went down,” Levitan stated.
Due to AT&T’s silence, which appears to be at the core of the problem, customers are left to conjecture.
The company sent a statement saying, “We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers.” “We really are sorry to them. Our first goal continues to be keeping our customers connected, and we are taking action to make sure they don’t go through this again in the future.
Dr. Diane Vonstein, an orthopedist, finds little solace in it. “I couldn’t get the internet to connect. I check my email in this manner initially. Couldn’t pull it off,” she remarked.
Dr. Vonstein claims she was unable to contact anyone on Thursday morning and that she only uses her phone in an emergency.
Fortunately, her service was restored about midday, just like the rest of the nation. Access to 911 was brought up as another possible issue by the widespread outage.
Bill Vedra, the chief of Cincinnati’s 911 service, claims he had no idea where calls would go or if cell systems would remain operational in the event of a blackout.
He tried making a call on a phone without cellular service while he was chatting with Local 12. It was successful in passing through.
here was sent straight to here [the dispatch center]. You must find it comforting “Local 12 stated. Indeed, Vedra added, “It’s great to see it in action.” “Normally, cellular networks function normally, so it’s not something we can test.”
According to Levitan, AT&T most likely resolved the problem by reverting to the normal 5G version of its network.
According to him, human error typically causes the malfunction to happen in between the chair and the keyboard. Nevertheless, the FCC announced on X that it is looking into the matter.
The Hamilton County Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, which organizes emergency response for events like weather and hazardous disasters, is another organization monitoring the outage that occurred on Thursday morning.
The disruption serves as a prime illustration of the necessity for people to diversify their communication options, according to Nick Crossley, the director of the organization.
We are able to text and email. We also have the county’s landline database,” Crossley added. “We can notify our social media and send geolocated messages to landlines. Of course, we also encourage people to check in with their local media to find out the location of these reports.”
Ad Emergency Management encourages everyone to make sure that, in addition to their cell phones, people have access to options such as TV, radio, weather radios, or regular phone service.
