Service outages for AT&T customers in Virginia, North Carolina

It’s hardly a “happy hump day” for AT&T with reports of service outages beginning around 4 a.m. this morning. AT&T said the service issue has been resolved.

“We worked as quickly as possible to restore service to some customers in the coastal areas of Virginia and North Carolina whose service may have been affected this morning by an equipment failure. We apologize for the inconvenience,” a spokesperson with AT&T told Light Reading in an email.

Most customer reports came in from the Virginia area, including Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Norfolk, Williamsburg, Newport News and Hampton. Houston, Texas, is also among the most reported locations, according to Ookla’s Downdetector site. In an email to Light Reading, AT&T explained there were service issues in some areas of Virginia and North Carolina, but the service disruptions aren’t nationwide.

At 7:17 a.m., customer reports of outages peaked at 1,293, which is an increase of nearly 12,000% over the normal baseline of 11 reports at that time of day, according to Ookla’s Downdetector site.

(Source: Ookla’s Downdetector site)

Downdetector report for AT&T outage on May 22, 2024. This chart shows a view of problem reports submitted in the past 24 hours compared to the typical volume of reports by time of day.

“Downdetector only reports an incident when the number of problem reports is significantly higher than the typical volume for that time of day,” noted Downdetector.