AT&T suffered a nationwide service outage for about two hours early Tuesday that prevented AT&T cellphone customers from calling 911 or sending text messages. Service was restored later in the morning.
"Earlier this morning some wireless customers may have been unable to connect to 911," read a statement issued AT&T at 8:20 a.m Central Time. "This has been resolved, and we apologize to anyone who was affected."
AT&T did not disclose the cause of the outage.
Several regions called out the network interruption, with police departments in Minnesota, Texas, Indiana, Alabama, Massachusetts, reporting the issue.
Approx an hour ago Minneapolis was made aware that AT&T is experiencing a 911 outage resulting in their customers unable to be directly connected to 911. The alternate number during this time for Mpls is 612-348-2345. We are working with our service partners to fix this issue.
— Minneapolis Police (@MinneapolisPD) July 2, 2019
The Tarrant County, Texas, 911 District reported the outage in a tweet around 6:30 a.m., according to the Dallas News.
If you are an AT&T cell phone customer and need police/fire/EMS in NRH please use our direct line in to dispatch 817-281-1000. https://t.co/hEPFhLlbnA
— North Richland Hills (@CityofNRH) July 2, 2019
AT&T has had 911 outages before. In 2017, police departments across the country reported two similar 911 outages that together resulted in more than 15,000 failed 911 calls. The Federal Communications Commission levied a fine of $5.5 million against AT&T for those outages.