Massachusetts 911 call centers flooded with people testing system amid AT&T outage; "Please do not do this"
BOSTON - As a U.S. cell service outage affected AT&T and other providers on Thursday, police told Massachusetts residents to stop testing the 911 system unless they have a real emergency.
"Many 911 centers in the state are getting flooded w/ calls from people trying to see if 911 works from their cell phone. Please do not do this," Massachusetts State Police posted to X, formerly known as Twitter. 'If you can successfully place a non-emergency call to another number via your cell service then your 911 service will also work."
Municipalities across the country reported difficulties with 911 service. State Police in Massachusetts said they were in contact with AT&T, which has by far the most outages according to Downdetector.com
"Some carriers have coverage, but if you need to call 911 and cannot do so, use a landline if possible until situation is resolved," State Police said.
"911 is for emergencies only"
The Sharon Police Department says their 911 system for calls and texts is working, but people are making unnecessary calls to ask why their phone isn't working.
"Sharon PD Dispatch has received multiple 911 calls asking why their cell phone does not work," the department posted to Facebook. "911 is for emergencies only."
The town of Bourne said text-to-911 service in Massachusetts "appears to be operating normally." Messages texted to 911 in the state will be answered by an emergency dispatcher.
AT&T working to restore service; encourages Wi-Fi calling
AT&T northeast spokeswoman Karen Twomey confirmed to WBZ-TV that customers in the region "are experiencing wireless service interruptions" but Wi-Fi calling still works. An outage map of affected areas showed the Boston and Worcester areas are among the places seeing problems.
Shortly after 3 p.m., AT&T said the outage had been resolved.
"We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them," the company said. "Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future."
The carrier revealed that the outage was due to a technical error when they tried to expand their network.
