Massive phone outage wreaks havoc across US

A major mobile phone service outage in the US has disrupted calls and text messages as well as emergency services in major cities.

A major mobile phone service outage has wreaked havoc across the US. Picture: Supplied

A massive mobile phone outage affected users across the US on Thursday local time — even stopping some police departments from being able to receive emergency calls.

Major US network AT&T was reportedly the hardest hit, with more than 70,000 reports at 8.30am New York time (12.30am AEDT), according to data from DownDetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from sources including user-submitted errors on its platform.

According to the New York Post, major outages were also reported on T-Mobile and Verizon, although a spokesman for the latter put it down to users reporting problems trying to call people with other services.

A major mobile phone service outage has wreaked havoc across the US. Picture: Supplied

Others reported issues on smaller carriers including Boost Mobile, Consumer Cellular and Straight Talk Wireless.

The problems extended from New York, Boston, and Atlanta on the East Coast to Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco — and even to Montreal in Canada.

Several police stations throughout the country even warned that people might be unable to call to report emergencies.

However, many AT&T users say they are stuck in “SOS Mode” in which they can only reach emergency services.

A spokeswoman for AT&T said the company is working “urgently to restore service.”

“We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored,” she said.

Widespread phone outage has affected thousands of users in the US. Picture: Supplied

On Verizon and T-Mobile, spokespersons told The Post their networks are operating normally.

They suggested that the issues only arise when customers try to call or text those using AT&T, with a spokesman from T-Mobile claiming: “Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks.”

The spokesman from Verizon added that its customers “experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier.

A phone outage has caused havoc in the US. Picture: Supplied

“We are continuing to monitor the situation,” the Verizon spokesman said in a statement.

Yet many online have expressed their frustrations with the cellphone companies amid the ongoing outages.

“AT&T is literally one of the most expensive phone companies, and y’all have the audacity to have a service outage for hours with zero updates being given to your customers?” one customer wrote on X.

“Y’all got one hour to wrap this s**t up! Fix it and fix it now.”

Another called it “crazy.”

“It’s a whole outage going [on] in the US and a lot of people can’t text or call anybody, only number you can call is 911 … this is unusual and scary,” he wrote.

Some feared the widespread outages could be a cyberattack, with one techie saying he “can’t imagine this is incompetence or a single node failure.”

The cause of the outages, however, remains unclear.