Do the AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and U.S. cellular service outages have anything to do with Russia?

Network outages have been affecting customers in the U.S. on a massive scale this morning. While AT&T reported the biggest outage, other telecom companies, including Verizon and T Mobile, have also experienced some down time in their networks. The result is tens of thousands of customers being unable to make calls, texts, or access the internet. The scale of it all has led some to question the possibility that it was an intentional cyberattack from the likes of Russia.

Whilst most of the networks have already been restored, people have been comparing the events to last year’s hit Netflix film Leave the World Behind. It probably did feel like that for a while, you never realize how dependent you are on your phone until you can’t use it anymore; in fact, maybe everything would go exactly the way it did in the movie. The internet, and other methods of communicating in the 21st century, are practically a lifeline for some people, so it would be a disaster if they went down. If someone wanted to cause panic, taking down cellular service would be the first step. That’s what people on X (formerly Twitter) have been saying, anyways.

Some think that Russia is testing nukes.

While others pointed out the convenient timing of it all. Maybe Vladimir Putin is conspiring to get Donald Trump back in office.

So was it Russia?

OK, let’s dial it back a bit. There’s no evidence yet to suggest Russia was responsible; while CNN reports that the White House federal agencies have been talking with AT&T to get to the bottom of the outages, the truth is nobody knows yet. We’re not ruling out the possibility that Russia was involved, but let’s wait until something’s confirmed before we start panicking and looting (not that anyone has started yet).

National Security spokesperson John Kirby reported that the FBI were looking into the issue to get answers. Whilst the FBI don’t usually get involved with service outages, it’s probably better to be safe than sorry, and do a thorough investigation. Again, this doesn’t mean anything yet.

Could there be other reasons?

A network going down isn’t exactly breaking news, minor outages in certain areas happen all the time. Telecom companies maintain that they usually happen for mundane reasons, such as software misconfigurations, and sometimes even construction work damaging fiber optic cables. While there are still thousands without service, AT&T claims that around 75% has been restored so far. Hopefully the rest of the network is restored soon, and we don’t end up like Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke in that Netflix movie.

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