AT&T said on Thursday afternoon that its service has been fully restored after a nationwide cellphone outage hit tens of thousands of its customers earlier in the day.
“We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers,” the company said in a statement. “We sincerely apologize to them. Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future.
AT&T, the nation’s largest carrier, has more than 240 million subscribers.
More than 70,000 outages were reported after 8 a.m. ET, according to Downdetector, a website that detects outages. The first outages were reported just before 4 a.m.
No reason has been given for the outages. ABC News reported that U.S. federal agencies including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are investigating to determine whether they were the result of a cyberattack. But National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Thursday afternoon that AT&T informed the White House that there is “no reason” to think the outage was a