By Shereen Siewert | Wausau Pilot & Review
Wireless customers across the country including communities in the Wausau area lost service overnight, prompting concern about disruption to 911 calls.
Widespread outages were reported beginning at around 2:30 a.m. and continued to rise throughout the morning hours. AT&T, in a statement, acknowledged the outage and said they are “working urgently to restore service to them.” The company has not provided a reason for the system failure.
The Marathon County Sheriff’s Department is one of multiple agencies nationwide posting to Facebook to advise customers about the outage.
“AT&T customers will not be able to call or use cellular data,” the Marathon County Sheriff’s Department notice reads. “If you are unable to call or reach loved ones, please be aware of the network outage. We have been advised some customers may not be able to call 911. Please be safe out there!”
Customers are encouraged to use WiFi calling until service is restored.
Verizon and T-Mobile say they are unaffected, though some customers say they are also experiencing outages on those networks. Those company officials say customers reporting outages could have been trying to reach customers who use AT&T.
CNN reports the issue appears related to how cellular services hand off calls from one network to the next, which is called “peering.” Tens of thousands of customers are affected.
