The US’ three main phone carriers have all suffered outages across the US, with customers on both coasts reporting dead signals. No explanation was immediately provided for the outages, which came amid widespread protests.
T-Mobile and AT&T users reported the outages on Monday afternoon, according to DownDetector, a website that tracks the availability of communications services and websites. Verizon users also reported issues, as are a number of smaller carriers, with most of the US’ major metropolitan areas seemingly affected.
T-Mobile’s president of technology, Neville Ray, said on Twitter that a “voice and data issue” occurred, and was fixed by the company’s engineers. AT&T has not yet commented, while a Verizon spokesperson told Deadline that their customers were no problems with its network.
Coming amid ongoing ‘Black Lives Matter’ street protests, the outages fueled a slew of conspiracy theories, ranging from government attempts to censor the protests, to a “cyber attack,” to a full-scale “alien invasion.”
Verizon outage coming soon to a protesting city near you? Inconclusive of course but the Verizon outage map right now is looking pretty odd… pic.twitter.com/PmoYi2xGy9
— Noah Thorp (@noahthorp) June 15, 2020
All major communications companies T-Mobile Verizon AT&T suffering outages may be the prelude to an alien invasion.
— David Leavitt (@David_Leavitt) June 15, 2020
For techies! Looks like we are under a cyber attack. Anyone else experiencing issue? Cell services particularly T-mobile are reporting outages pic.twitter.com/3NyxIhge63
— Olga Lautman (@olgaNYC1211) June 15, 2020
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Source: RT