North Texas first responders say cell phone outages not affecting 911 services

NORTH TEXAS - If you're having cell phone issues this morning...you're not alone. There have been nationwide outages across service providers. AT&T, which is headquartered in Dallas, has had the most reported outages. But, first responders want to assure North Texans that emergency services are still available.

Dallas, Fort Worth, Irving, Frisco and Burleson police departments all sent out statements Thursday morning, letting residents know you can still reach 911, even if your phone is in SOS mode.

Dallas and Houston are among the locations with the most outages reported. As of 6:03 a.m., some 1,120 AT&T customers were reporting issues in Dallas. By 7:13 a.m., Downdetector, which tracks service interruptions, says only 388 customers were affected.

Meanwhile, in Houston, the peak number of outages aligned with the timing of Dallas residents' outages—1,455 customers were reporting issues at 6:16 a.m. By 7:16 a.m., that number dropped to 516.

Downdetector says AT&T had tens of thousands of customers reporting they had no service. The nationwide outages reports appear to have started at around 4 a.m. EST. As of 7:03 a.m., those have reached a peak with some 73,496 customers reporting issues. 

AT&T released a statement saying, "Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. Our network teams took immediate action and so far three-quarters of our network has been restored. We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers."

Customers of T Mobile, Verizon, UScellular and Consumer Cellular were also reporting issues nationwide, though far, far fewer.