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Cell phone outages in several states are being investigated

REUTERS/ANDREW KELLY/FILE PHOTO: A sign is seen at the Federal Communications Commission headquarters in Washington, DC, August 2020. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile said today that some customers were having problems making calls to other wireless carriers, prompting an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission.

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REUTERS/ANDREW KELLY/FILE PHOTO

A sign is seen at the Federal Communications Commission headquarters in Washington, DC in August 2020. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile announced today that some customers were having problems making calls to other wireless carriers, prompting the Federal Communications Commission to investigate.

AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile announced today that some customers were having problems making calls to other wireless carriers, prompting an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission.

The extent of the problem was not immediately clear.

AT&T said in a statement: “There is a nationwide issue affecting customers’ ability to make calls between carriers. We are working closely with Verizon to determine the nature of the issue and what actions need to be taken.”

AT&T added that there was “no nationwide outage” on its network.

Verizon said in a statement that its network is operating normally, but that some of its customers in the Northeast and Midwest are “experiencing issues calling or texting customers on another carrier. We continue to monitor the situation.”

Tracking website Downdetector.com recorded more than 2,300 outage reports as of 5:46 p.m. EDT, with the New York City borough of Brooklyn, Chicago and Philadelphia among the locations with the most reports.

T-Mobile US said there was “no outage. We are seeing an increase in Down Detector outages with other carriers, so this could likely be a problem our customers are having connecting to users on other networks.”

The FCC and New York Attorney General Letitia James said in February they were investigating the cause of an AT&T outage earlier this month and the telecom company’s response. The outage lasted more than 10 hours and affected more than 70,000 customers.

AT&T credited customers with a full day of service for the provider’s downtime.