DALLAS — North Texas police departments and other first responders were reporting that Thursday morning's AT&T outages were not having a widespread impact on their operations and that 911 calls did not appear to be affected.
Still, at least two police departments, North Richland Hills and Arlington, reported seeing limited issues involving 911 calls.
Police officials in North Richland Hills told WFAA that the city's 911 call center noticed that some AT&T customers were having trouble getting through. The call center could see the 911 calls come through, but the customer could not hear ringing or establish a connection.
Dispatchers were able to see these "abandoned" 911 calls and call back the person trying to get through, police said.
The Arlington Police Department also reported seeing a similar issue with callers hanging up after thinking their call was not going through. Arlington dispatchers would then call back the number.
Other police departments and first responders across North Texas recommended that AT&T customers check to make sure their Wi-Fi calling feature is turned on. Wi-Fi calling allows customers to make calls when connected to Wi-Fi. But as MedStar officials in Fort Worth noted, Wi-Fi calling doesn't have the same geo-location accuracy as cellular calls. So if a caller reaches 911 through Wi-Fi calling, they might need to provide additional information about their location for dispatch.
Also, even if a customer's service is down, their phone should still have an SOS feature available that allows them to call 911, officials said.
The outages were being reported early Thursday across the country, including in DFW, as AT&T customers dealt with cell phone and internet service issues.
There were some reports of T-Mobile and Verizon also being impacted by the outages, but most of the outage reports involved AT&T, which is based in Dallas.
At least 60,000 customers have reported issues with their network on outage-tracking site DownDetector as of 8 a.m. Eastern, almost double the 35,000 reporting problems an hour earlier.
AT&T in a statement confirmed "some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning," but by 11 a.m. the company said three-fourths of its network had been restored.
AT&T said in a statement shortly before 2:30 p.m. that services were restore to all customers.
"“We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them," AT&T 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.”