A mass cellular outage across the United States contributed to “many” 911 centers in Massachusetts getting flooded with calls from people trying to see if the emergency system worked, the Massachusetts State Police said Thursday.
Customers of major cellular providers — AT&T, Cricket Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile, and others — largely reported issues in the morning with service starting to return to some phones around noon, according to data from Downdetector.
AT&T alone peaked at more than 73,000 outages around 9 a.m. with issues starting around 3:30 a.m., but the number dropped to just under 59,000 before noon, according to the data.
“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored,” AT&T said in a statement.
Massachusetts state police urged cellular customers to stop testing emergency services by calling 911, saying on social media that 911 centers across the state were “getting flooded” with calls.
“Please do not do this. If you can successfully place a non-emergency call to another number via your cell service then your 911 service will also work,” the state police said in a statement just after 9 a.m.
State police said they were in contact with AT&T and were “monitoring the outage situation involving some commercial cellular carriers.”
“Some carriers have coverage, but if you need to call 911 and cannot do so, use a landline if possible until situation is resolved,” the state police said.
The Boston Fire Department said residents who are dealing with cellphone outages — either Thursday or in the future — can pull one of over 1,200 fire boxes if they are in an emergency situation.
“This technology has been operational since 1852,” the department said on X, the platform formally known as Twitter.
Cricket Wireless, which is owned by AT&T, peaked at over 13,600 reported outages around 8 a.m. and dropped to over 7,300 by noon, according to Downdetector.
T-Mobile had just over 1,800 reported outages after 9:15 a.m. and Verizon had just under 3,000 customers reporting issues, according to the tracker.
But both T-Mobile and Verizon said they were not experiencing issues.
“Our network is operating normally. Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks,” the company said in a reason.
Verizon also said its network was operating normally.
“Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier. We are continuing to monitor the situation,” the company said in a statement.
Materials from the Associated Press were used in this report.
