AT&T outage – latest: Phone network offline leaving people across US unable to make calls

AT&T has advised affected customers to use WiFi calling. As the name suggests, that relies on WiFi and the internet to make calls, rather than the phone network. As such, it gets around the problems with the phone network (but does of course rely on you having access to a WiFi connection).

It’s turned on by opening up the Settings app on your iPhone or Android. Press “Cellular” on an iPhone or “Connection” on an Android, and then choose the WiFi calling option, which will allow you to turn it on and choose important settings.

In response to questions from customers, AT&T says it has “located” and “pinpointed an outage”.

“We don’t have an estimated time frame, but our team is on it,” it said on X/Twitter.

AT&T has sent an array of different messages to affected customers today. But they are mostly along the lines of the below:

“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that is happening and 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.”

… to The Independent’s live coverage of the outage at AT&T.