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T-Mobile outage across East Coast takes out voice calls

Mobile internet services were working, however.

Corinne Reichert Senior Editor
Corinne Reichert (she/her) grew up in Sydney, Australia and moved to California in 2019. She holds degrees in law and communications, and currently writes news, analysis and features for CNET across the topics of electric vehicles, broadband networks, mobile devices, big tech, artificial intelligence, home technology and entertainment. In her spare time, she watches soccer games and F1 races, and goes to Disneyland as often as possible.
Expertise News, mobile, broadband, 5G, home tech, streaming services, entertainment, AI, policy, business, politics Credentials
  • I've been covering technology and mobile for 12 years, first as a telecommunications reporter and assistant editor at ZDNet in Australia, then as CNET's West Coast head of breaking news, and now in the Thought Leadership team.
Corinne Reichert
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Couldn't make voice calls on Friday night? It wasn't your phone's fault. 

Angela Lang/CNET

US mobile carrier  T-Mobile  suffered an outage Friday night, with customers on the East Coast unable to make voice calls. Calls immediately disconnected after dialing a number, users said. 

T-Mobile didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but as of 3:20 p.m. PT, there were around 14,500 reports of the service being out, according to Down Detector. Most of those reports were coming from Philadelphia; New York City; Washington, DC; Newark, New Jersey; Chicago; Houston; Providence, Rhode Island; and Baltimore.

"Anyone else experiencing a @TMobile outage in NY? My family and I can't make calls," one customer tweeted at 2:23 p.m. PT.

"@TMobile outage in the DC metro? Can't place any calls," another tweeted at 2:15 p.m. PT. "They sent me a PM to use wifi but that still does not work."

"Is there an outage somewhere in the Philadelphia or Southeastern PA area? for some reason, calls will not go through between me and my family's cell phones.  but texts are going through fine," someone tweeted at 2:27 p.m. PT.

West Coast customers appear to be unaffected by the outage.

By 2:17 p.m. PT, Metro PCS -- owned by T-Mobile -- was also flagged as having issues by Down Detector. It was joined by US Cellular at 2:58 p.m., and AT&T at 3:28 p.m., with almost 700 reports. Down Detector also noticed issues across Verizon and Sprint.

Verizon customers were only impacted when trying to call customers of other networks experiencing issues, a spokesperson explained in an email. Verizon added it had only very minimal outages that were related to Hurricane Dorian, and those were limited to one area of Outer Banks, North Carolina.

Outages
Screenshot by Corinne Reichert/CNET

AT&T confirmed it had no outage, but was aware of another provider being down.

As of around 3:45 p.m. PT, T-Mobile customers reported their services being restored.

Sprint didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Originally published Sept. 6, 3:28 p.m. PT.
Update, 3:56 p.m.: Adds that services appear to be restored; 4:21 p.m.: Adds info from Verizon; 4:35 p.m.: Adds comment from AT&T; 5:07 p.m.: Adds confirmation from AT&T

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