AT&T Reports 1,000 Of Their Towers Are Out Affecting Cell Phone Service Throughout LA

September 24, 2011 6:02 PM

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — AT&T reports that nearly 1,000 of their cell towers are down affecting countless customers throughout the Los Angeles area.

The company says they are working to correct the problem but don’t expect to be fully operational until 2:30 tomorrow morning.

Many customers have reported trouble making and receiving calls as well as receiving voice messages.

A local AT&T store told CBS2 and KCAL9′s assignment desk that the outages have been “sporadic.”

Text messaging and sending and receiving data is apparently not affected.

AT&T Reports 1,000 Of Their Towers Are Out Affecting Cell Phone Service Throughout LA

Karla Hidalgo

This really SUCKS!!! I need to make calls and I cant get through!! Grrrr!!! WTH!!!

Duh!

This is why you have a land line in your home.
During a power outage, cell towers don’t work.

don morning

that’s not entirely true. most all modern cell towers have UPS/battery backup systems in case of power failures.
Will

@ don morning – Uninterruptible Power Supply will last severy hours and will recharge again once the outage is over. I defer that the power outage report is fiction so who knows what is really going on?

Rick

Well..Guess that explains the “Sorry,your call did not go through,please try again later” message..I nearly went and replaced the phone thinking it was defective..
FC

I’m dying to hear their excuse for the problem. I’ll bet that their excuse will be something like “hackers did it”, “or the software took a long lunch”.

michelle

Massive X flare from the Sun, CME’s (coronal mass ejections) headed toward Earth, knocks out power and satelites … We have had 2 X flares and over 11 M flares in last 48 hours. Go to You Tube and search The Sun Today by NASA’s Dr. Strong. Chili has a power outage too

http://aquarianphilosophy.wordpress.com aquarianphilosophy

We are entering Solar Cycle 24. This will be a very extreme cycle, and result in many solar flares and CME’s. It’s predicted that there is a 60% probability that one or more CME’s will be higher than the magnitude that caused the N.E. grid failure twenty years ago. The problem now is that such an event will cause the entire grid to go down (because of interconnectivity), requiring approximately 2-7 years to re-build it. Mostly because the 400 kV transformers are no longer manufactured, and most will be fried. Also, many non-military satellites will fail, so good luck getting cells or GPS to work. http://wp.me/p1MDQo-6m
http://aquarianphilosophy.wordpress.com aquarianphilosophy

As I have postulated before with my synopsis of the CA/AZ/Mexico black-outs we should begin to expect this to be a more common thing. Black-outs can be survived and maintained extremely well in most areas (in the United States) so long as there is a decent supply of both water and food saved up. Food can stay good in the refrigerator without power about 2 days (so long the refrigerator door is not opened frequently) and water can be stored easily and for a budget. There is no reason to fear anything, but being prepared is just a smart move for a person to protect themselves and their family, period.
http://wp.me/p1MDQo-7c
नमस्ते

mike

The report is wrong. I can’t send text messages either.

Matt Mazurek

indeed

My Phone is a paperweight

Yep, LOTS of ATT towers down in Los Angeles / SoCal — Around 6:00pm’ish PST spoke to ATT CSR via skype (since cell phone is now a paperweight until ATT gets their towers functioning). I’m in the LA Harbor/Southbay area and per ATT CSR, “the tower problem is in different areas of SoCal (translation: widespread) and half of the towers are being worked on today and the other half tomorrow (?) so we may not have service back up on all cell towers until tomorrow, Sun Sep 25th.” Wow, ATT — could you please be more vague about when we may have cell phone service and where it’s actually working if it’s working at all? Yay technology.
Bo

No service here in Santa Monica.

bounce

I’m in Santa Monica as well, and while my iPhone 4 doesn’t show a network indicator (E / 3G), it does show full bars and I can in fact make and receive calls.

Weird.

http://robistech.com/2011/09/25/some-att-towers-down-in-la-developing/ AT&T Towers Down in LA *DEVELOPING* | Robert Rosenfeld

[...] CBSLA repors that AT&T reports that nearly 1,000 of their cell towers are down affecting countless customers throughout the Los Angeles area. [...]
Rich

No bars..No service in Valley…Good going AT&T…..
Sara

This is really annoying because its the second time in about a month that AT&T has had problems where I live. A month ago I couldnt make calls or text because service wasn’t working and when I went to the AT&T store they couldn’t give an exact time frame as to when it would be back up. Tons of customers were walking in with the same issue. I had to wait about four hours before it came back up again. I’ve never realized how much I rely on my phone until service is down.
RICH

i find this funny people lose their minds when they cant use their phone come on people life went of for a long time before they came up with cell phones TRUST ME YOU WILL NOT DIE WITH OUT YOUR PORTY

duh

^^^ this
Mon

Ya but people had landlines before cell phones so they had a way to communicate…most people only have cells now and rely on them for business and childcare. It is a big deal and can create a real problem if you are a parent or people depend on you for health reasons.

cindy

if i had people depending on me for their own health or for some like type reason i would not depend on a cell phone no matter what company your with this sort of thing is a real possibility i have my cell but i also have a land line

michelle

IT’s sad, all the real problems in the world and THIS is what everyone chooses to complain about.

Ken

South Gate Ca
Calls can not be completed
Message 6

This is BS
It has been down over 1 hr
Come On AT&T
Neil

I think we should be compensated by cutting our cell phone bill for this month since we cant make any calls today.
Michelle

Absolutely ridiculous. My phone has been out since 2pm today. No calls or texts for 6 hours now. This is my primary phone (no house phone) so it’s unsettling not being able to make calls in case of any emergencies. And besides that, it is unfair to pay so much money for such unreliable service. I will definitely be cancelling my contract once the phones are back up.
Eggcellent

So can anyone think of a reason that SO MANY towers would be affected simultaneously? Given all of the strange stuff going on in the world, this certainly has a “doomy” feel to it! BTW, isn’t the “Hoax and Chains” guy due for a visit in a day or two?
Mark S.

AT&T erroneously calls the outage “sporadic”. The loss of cellular signal in the San Fernando Valley is nothing short of a electronic black hole. A group of five people were on a conference call when I walked into an Authorized AT&T reseller. The agent refused to identify her call center or provide a location so we could track our call back later. The agent offered no reasons for the cause of the outage; when service would come back; and refused to compensate with any credit for the disruption. AT&T should learn customer service from companies like Disney and Ritz Carlton. Verizon looks more and more attractive.

attempted

Typical at&t consumer service… AT&T is just too big of an organization where the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. For you old school people; remember as Lily Tomlin would say, “We’re the telephone company. We don’t care.”

John

This is AT&T’s answer to why they must be allowed to purchase T-Moble. So they can have a Monolopy on all. they need to be stopped.

John

I heard it was during a major 4G upgrade to the system… Will they tell us this????? I doubt it……..

John

3G or even 4G AT&T still can’t deliver. They can’t be trusted. They can never give an honest answer. All they want is to own everthing and everyone. We must bow down to they. I say BS.

Tmobile

Do we still agree that AT&T and T-Mobile should merge?
Kristine

The ATT operators should know about this after 2 hours of outages…and people calling from outside of the LA area…what are they doing? I was told, “I don’t know anything about it mam.” Sporadic? I don’t think so..LA? Not just there…I can’t get through down in San Clemente…
I betcha tomorrow there are going to be a lot of ATT customers upset over this one…
KK

Text messaging is affected. No calls out, no calls in, no messages can be left, no texts out or in. And what reason would that be ATT? I expect to be refunded with interest!
Estevan Carlos Benson

This is pretty absurd. They should have a system of notifying the public of these outages.
Robert

so that’s were NASA’s satellite came down at ..no doubt AT&T has a clause in that book they wrote for a contract.
Cuppie Love

I am passed upset angry and just bewildered, this company charges astronomical fees charges and they can’t offer a solution as to why we don’t have service. Unacceptable!
smdh

Dear AT&T, this is what greed will get you
Anna

Thats why I left AT&T 2 yrs ago bad services everbody should go to Verizon Wireless
tom

their just found out the cause it was a rat chewed up a wire hahah