Phone outage impacts 911 calls, not caused by solar flares

Dalton Sweat Publisher

How do you call 911 when your cell phone service is out?

It is a 21st century question for sure, but one that many local residents faced on the morning of Thursday, Feb. 22, when cell phone service for AT&T was knocked out for tens of thousands of customers nationwide for about eight hours.

While the problem wasn't simply local, Hays County began informing residents of ways around the issue for crucial situations.

'While only AT&T can resolve the issue, Hays County has been communicating proactively to inform affected residents on other ways they can reach emergency services should the need arise,' said Mike Jones, director of Hays County Office of Emergency Services.

Hays County Emergency Services began sharing information Thursday morning.

'AT&T's cell network is down,” Emergency Services posted on Facebook at 7:13 a.m. “All calls to 911 must be made through another carrier or a landline.”

The Hays County Sheriff’s Office offered tips to enable Wi-Fi calling but also asked the public to stop testing if 911 would work on their phone.

“If your cellular data is not working or is turned off, you will not be able to get through to 911,” the Sheriff ’s Office stated on Facebook. “In the case of an emergency, you can either connect to Wi-Fi to make the call, use a landline, or borrow another person's phone who has cellular data. Our 911 telecommunications staff are receiving several calls on 911 of citizens testing if their phones are working. Please do not call 911 to test your phone. This can hold up our call takers for emergencies that may be coming in.”

The issue was largely resolved by midday Thursday.

According to the Associated Press, there were as many as 73,000 reported outages.

'Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. Our network teams took immediate action and so far three-quarters of our network has been restored. We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers,” AT&T and Cricket said in a statement.

Cricket Wireless, which is owned by AT&T, had more than 9,000 outages, Downdetector said Thursday. Verizon had more than 2,000 outages and T-Mobile had more than 1,400 outages. Boost Mobile had about 700 outages, an Associated Press article written by Michelle Chapman said.

“Verizon’s network is 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,” Verizon said.

T-Mobile said that it did not experience an outage.

“Our network is operating normally. Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks,” TMobile said.

Some iPhone users have seen SOS messages displayed in the status bar on their cellphones. The message indicates that the device is having trouble connecting to their cellular provider's network, but it can make emergency calls through other carrier networks, according to Apple Support.

As of the time of press, no cause had been given for the outages. Many pointed to strong solar flares that occurred overnight, which have impacted cell data in the past. However, the solar flares impacted a different location and a different frequency band making it highly unlikely.

“While solar flares can affect communications systems, radar, and the Global Positioning System, based on the intensity of these eruptions and associated phenomena, it is unlikely that these flares contributed to the widely reported cellular network outage,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.