AT&T cellular outage in United States disrupts vital services

A cellular outage early on Thursday hit thousands of AT&T users in the United States, disrupting calls and text messages as well as emergency services in major cities including San Francisco.

About 70,000 incidents were reported around 10:00 a.m. ET, according to data from outage-tracking website Downdetector.com. The cause of Thursday's outage was not immediately clear.

"Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning," AT&T said in a statement to CNBC. "Our network teams took immediate action and so far three-quarters of our network has been restored. We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers."

A spike in outages began around 4:00 a.m. ET and peaked at around 74,000 reported incidents at 8:30 a.m. ET, according to Downdetector.

Shares of AT&T were down about 2% Thursday morning following the outages.

The AT&T outage has impacted people's ability to reach emergency services by dialing 911, a post on social media platform X from the San Francisco Fire Department said.

"We are aware of an issue impacting AT&T wireless customers from making and receiving any phone calls (including to 911)," the fire department said on the platform.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said in a post on X that the city can receive and make outbound 911 calls but that AT&T customers in the area had reported issues.

"We have received calls from AT&T customers that their cellular phones are in SOS mode. Please direct all inquiries to restore service to AT&T," Dickens said.

The Massachusetts State Police said that people were flooding their 911 center with calls trying to determine if the service works from their cell phones.

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