Media

Vermont part of national cellphone outage

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by Guy Page

As most Vermonters already know, their cellphone usage is out this morning. According to the industry website Techradar.com, cellphone giants AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are experiencing major outages. Here’s the little we know at the moment.

Cellphone coverage returned as of 11:18 AM for some cellphone carriers.

TechRadar reports:

When did it start? “The issues appeared to start at around 3.30 AM ET, according to Downdetector, with AT&T seemingly the hardest hit….. The main hotspots for issues are in Atlanta, Dallas and Houston.”

What’s causing it? Techradar says: “Some wilder speculation has pointed to possible interference from recent solar flares, one of which peaked today at 1:32am ET according to NASA. But a more likely explanation is more humdrum network problems.

“Lee McKnight, associate professor in the iSchool at Syracuse University, told us: “The most likely cause is a cloud misconfiguration. Which is a fancy word for saying human error. I was reviewing this exact issue in class yesterday” he said.

“Meanwhile, an anonymous industry source similarly told CNN that the issue is likely down to peering, which is how cellphone services hand off calls from one network to the next. Still, right now, this is all just speculation until we get an official explanation from AT&T and others.”

When will it be restored? Carrier PR statements say techs are working on the problem – but no timeframe for resolution is given. When VDC gives its office location on the Verizon site, we get this message: “We’re looking into Barre, VT area for a potential network disruption. We should know more within 12 hours. You can check your network status again later for updates.”

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Categories: Media

13 replies »

  2. Tuesday’s VDC article “The Consolidated Communications transition and the future of rural landlines in Vermont” is pertinent to this issue. As our phones are fully transitioned from land lines to cell and/or digital we’ll lose the reliability of plain old telephone service. It’s a fact, it’s happening, we won’t have a choice. Consolidated will be making changes and issuing notices sometime in the near future.
    The only time I remember my land line being out of service was many years ago when the phone sat in a book case and a book tipped the receiver off the base. It was my fault and easily fixed. Thousands of phones out of service is a crisis.

    This are a different story not to be taken lightly. My personal conspiracy theory is this was a trial for a black swan event. Lately a lot of conspiracy theories have turned into fact in a matter of months. It’s laughable to blame it on climate change. Who is behind it? I don’t know but can imagine.

    • No- I do not have a cell phone because I have NO cell service, so I wasn’t affected this morning. My first thought was now you all know what it’s like to NOT have cell service. I have a place for an antenna-on my three story barn-but no one will take any responsibility to allow it. I won’t bore you with all the “stuff” I’ve gone through for many years on this. Last time I attempted to discuss it with someone the issue was bounced back and forth bet. State and Fed. lawmakers.

    • The outage will be explained away as something else, but a failed software installation and rerouting of fiber optic lines thru government funded servers is
      more probable than not. These cellular networks have redundancy levels that are unfathomable. To affect all of the major carriers requires commonality at a high level, what or whom do you suppose has that access? We know the NSA does, by their own admission.

  4. need more bonding to fix this problem/// got to force you to buy some thing to keep this economy from going down the drain

  6. Google HAARP. You might be surprised. Maybe also had something to do with fire in Maui. Don’t know just wondering.

  7. maui oh you mean the future smart city/// lot of information on this subject///