AT&T outage cut cell service to thousands in Minnesota and across nation

Thousands of customers in Minnesota and across the country lost cellphone service for several hours during a widespread AT&T outages Thursday morning.

Downdetector — a website that tracks system outages based on customer complaints — showed outages from 3 a.m. till noon affected nearly 75,000 customers of AT&T and its discount carrier, Cricket Wireless.

During the outages, customers could not make or receive calls and texts, and likely lost access to the internet if using data.

Dallas-based AT&T — the country’s largest carrier with more than 240 million customers — posted on X, formerly Twitter, only that its systems were “undergoing planned maintenance/being optimized for performance,” according to the Washington Post.

At 2:10 p.m. local time, the company said it had resolved the issues.

“We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them,” AT&T said in a statement. “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.”

A spokesman declined to say how many customers were affected and did not comment on issues specific to Minnesota. An analysis of Google search data showed searches for “cancel AT&T” rose 567% on Thursday.

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

Verizon told the Washington Post that outages did not interrupt its service. But like T-Mobile, it said its customers had struggled to reach AT&T subscribers as a result of that company’s outages.

The city of Minneapolis said its 911 phone system remained operational during the AT&T outages. However, the Washington Post said other local governments did experience problems.