AT&T Regional Outage in Chicago Area - No Call, No SMS, No EDGE

[AdamJRed]

Sometime this morning (Friday 09/28) AT&T Wireless had a regional network outage in the Chicago area. I do not have exact numbers but the affected number of subscribers is somewhere in the 4-6+ million range.

Incoming calls, Outgoing calls, SMS, and any EDGE access are offline. Even 911 emergency calls have failed unless you have a strong enough signal from the T-mobile network. AT&T has said they opened and escalated a ticket #TT000005378956 and said engineers are working on the problem.

From what I can tell, I've had no service going on 2+ hours now, man this sucks.

Although this isn't iPhone specific news, it is at least the largest wireless outage within the US that I am aware of, second only to the cell-network overloads experienced in the wake of 9/11...

It appears that even if the latest update didn't 'brick' your iPhone, AT&T will shut it down for you!

 

[kibit]

Thanks for posting this! I thought it had something to do with the 1.1.1 update. Glad to know

 

[AdamJRed]

Sure, as did I.

Our business is pretty dependent on cellphones, and this outage has basically shut us down.

From what I understand Chicago is AT&T Wireless's 2nd largest market. This is n't really going to reflect well...

 

[AdamJRed]

Just as an update, as of 9:18am CDT it appears that all service has returned.

The outage duration appears to be about 2.5 hours long (~6:45 to 9:18).

 

[~Phi]

Weird, I didn't have any issues at all and I'm in Chicago. Had 5 bars all morning and was surfing via EDGE for a while.

 

[AdamJRed]

~Phi - what are are you in?

It seems the larger number of the affected subscribers was outside of the loop area and into the suburbs. I had confirmed people were out from as far south as Joliet to as far north as Buffalo Grove.

 

[colagirl]

AT&T outage

My service has been out since 7:45 this morning, I live in Joliet and commute to Lisle, still no service.

 

[chiefillini]

I to thought it was the update. Mine was down in naperville, lisle, downers grove. Came back sometime after 10. Glad didn't have to make a run into the apple store. I was all ready to swear that i had never hacked the phone.

 

[Badbreatth]

Outage widespread?

I live in Virginia and my iPhone and my friends iPhones lost all service today 10-28-87. Is it possible the Outage with AT&T was widespread? Is there any official word from AT&T about the outage?

 

[Geffen]

This thread is almost a month old, i'm sure the Chicago area has been restored by now, i would call AT&T.

 

[gkarris]

(snoozes...)

I was an AT&T Wireless customer years ago (which became Cingular and now AT&T again) and we used to get outages a lot in the suburbs. Hence me switching to T-Mobile...