AT&T service restored after 12-hour outage

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — AT&T users across the U.S. were without cell service for hours on Thursday.

The outage began about 2:30 a.m. Central time and peaked at about 73,000 reports, according to Downdetector.com.

Shortly after 2 p.m., AT&T said service had been restored.

“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 is the nation’s largest cell service provider, with more than 240 million subscribers, according to the Associated Press.

Outages were also reported on the Verizon and T-Mobile networks, CNN reported, but those companies said the affected customers were likely trying to contact AT&T users.

AT&T blamed a coding error for the outage.

“Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack,” the company said in a statement.