Looks like a major cell phone outage. All carriers effected.

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Haertig said:
Could you enlighten me ... what is the big picture that you are painting?
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I don't paint!😉 If it was an outage, just certain phones would not have been affected, ALL phones in the network/networks that had an outage would have been affected! This was their way of showing us they can turn off your communication if they choose to do so, to whomever they choose!
 
Pearl said:
I don't paint!😉 If it was an outage, just certain phones would not have been affected, ALL phones in the network/networks that had an outage would have been affected! This was their way of showing us they can turn off your communication if they choose to do so, to whomever they choose!
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Is this just speculation, or is there any information confirming this?

ALL phones in the network/networks that had an outage would have been affected!
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Not necessarily true. And even if true, outages are not always just ON or OFF. Sometimes one area is affected while another is not. Sometimes outages flicker between ON and OFF before they stabilize (if they ever do). Sometimes one cell tower may have newer equipment/software installed while a sibling tower has not been upgraded - and these two towers may respond differently to a central service problem. Two people standing next to each other may be connected to different towers. And depending on timing, one person may randomly hit an ON flicker while the next person hits an OFF flicker 30 seconds later. These two people will report different observations regarding the outage affecting them or not.

Anyway, of course they can turn communication on or off at will. This is not a secret capability that nobody knew they had - a capability that they would need to "show us" with an artificial outage demonstration. If someone didn't already know that their service provider could turn their phone on or off at will, that person is pretty ignorant. They do this all the time down to the individual phone level. You buy a new phone, they have to activate it for it to work. You don't pay your bill, and they deactivate it so it no longer works. Or they can shut down a cell tower completely - potentially affecting many people at the same time. They can shut off your water too. Or your electricity. Even your newspaper delivery or garbage pick up - they can stop that as well. None of this should come as a surprise to anyone, or require an outage demonstration, or be a new cause to panic.
 
I hear you, Peanut and Lady L....I can go days without a call, but my favorite cousin will call twice a week, sometimes her sis calls me. Hospice for mom calls me once a week. Neighbors don't ever call, they just come over. We had a "black box" phone (landline like the amish use) but realized we just didn't use it. Husband has a smart phone and uses it all the time. He talks to our kids most every day, his mom daily, and his sisters often, and he looks up his email and on line stuff on it when we are not home. I don't think I'd have a flip phone much at all, but if I'm out on the property, we do use it like a walkie talkie in case husband needs something. I would just use the handitalkies on simplex for that purpose if his phone went out.
 
And... this morning i'm having land line issues. I've tried 2 calls separated by an hour, both times I got the message... All circuits are busy!

There is no indication this issue is related to yesterdays kerfuffle, but... :rolleyes:
 
Patchouli said:
Having line issues at work today, @Peanut
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It was off and on all day with computers and phones (since the phones are connected into the computers and internet). What a mess. Active calls cut out completely. And other weird stuff.
Imagine traffic lights being hit with breakdowns everywhere. I guess I should have kept my fingers still. :oops:
 
Bacpacker said:
The only ones in this area affected were 100% at&t
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And anyone trying to call an AT&T number....which since nobody acutally on AT&T could call....meant a roughly 50% chance that if you could call, you where trying to call AT&T.....which didn't work....which was why every carrier had a huge spike in error reports, as cumulatively, 75% of calls failed during that period.
 
Aerindel said:
And anyone trying to call an AT&T number....which since nobody acutally on AT&T could call....meant a roughly 50% chance that if you could call, you where trying to call AT&T.....which didn't work....which was why every carrier had a huge spike in error reports, as cumulatively, 75% of calls failed during that period.
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That's an important point that many people missed.
If you were a Verizon customer and you only call your mom (who is on At&T), your Verizon phone 'didn't work' :(.
 
Bacpacker said:
Wasn't much effect around here. I only talked to 2 people out of close to 100 last 2 days that had any issues. Other than news reports and on here, I would have never known it
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I don't think I've talked to a hundred people in the last 10 years.

But anyway, it was fixed before normal people even woke up.
 
I made a late afternoon call, had no issues. This event reminds me... I've seen a lot of large scale electronic equipment upgrades, company wide, even hospitals, participated in a few.

I think at&t did a major migration to new equipment, took about 36hrs. Might be a few lingering issues over the next week. Just a guess... bet the price of red bull just spiked, lots of red-eyed engineers at atnt. 😁
 
Peanut said:
I made a late afternoon call, had no issues. This event reminds me... I've seen a lot of large scale electronic equipment upgrades, company wide, even hospitals, participated in a few.

I think at&t did a major migration to new equipment, took about 36hrs. Might be a few lingering issues over the next week. Just a guess... bet the price of red bull just spiked, lots of red-eyed engineers at atnt. 😁
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Wondered about that too, our separate security guys have been working on our system trying to keep things operational but there’s only so much they can do.
 
Aerindel said:
I don't think I've talked to a hundred people in the last 10 years.

But anyway, it was fixed before normal people even woke up.
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Typically I don't talk to more than 10 or so in a day. But the last three days I've been going thru a facility that houses probably 1000 people on a given day. Seemed like everyone was asking what we were doing. Had all kinds of unusual equipment.
 
Pearl said:
Around here, if you have WIFI and AT&T your phone worked! It wasn't just an outage!!
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Do you know that WiFi calling - which some, but not all cellphone/carrier combinations support - and cellular calling use totally different technologies and networks? e.g., the entire cellular network can go down and WiFi calling still works? WiFi calling is much more limited, typically it's only feasible when you're at a static location already connected to a WiFi router.
 

Update — May 11, 2024 at 9:11 AM EDT​

On May 11, 2024, at 07:28 AM EDT (1128 UTC), extreme (G5) solar conditions were observed once again by the NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). The geomagnetic storming, which varies in intensity, is expected to persist through at least Sunday.

" Another strong solar flare detected
A powerful X5.4 magnitude solar flare was detected from sunspot cluster NOAA region 3664.

Solar flares of this magnitude are relatively rare and are characterized by intense eruptions of energy from the Sun that typically last anywhere from minutes to hours.

The flare reached its peak at 01:23 AM EDT on May 11, 2024.

Potential impact on high-frequency radio signals​

Users of high-frequency (HF) radio signals may experience temporary degradation or complete loss of signal on much of the sunlit side of Earth due to the solar flare.

The threat of additional strong flares and CMEs is expected to remain until the large and magnetically complex sunspot cluster (NOAA region 3664) rotates out of view over the next several days."

https://www.earth.com/news/extreme-rare-g5-level-geomagnetic-storm-highest-level-hits-earth/

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News Coming Your Way :
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