AT&T outage resolved, affected thousands of customers in North Carolina and throughout the country

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Lots of cell phone users across the Cape Fear were without use of their phones today due to a widespread AT&T service outage.

AT&T has since announced the outage that affected North Carolina and several other states has been resolved.

Thousands of people in North Carolina and several other states were without cell phone service starting early Thursday morning.

Customers with other providers including Verizon and T-Mobile also reported not having service.

Because of the widespread outage, New Hanover County 911 Communications Center Director Hope Downs said some people were unable to make calls for help.

“We received some calls from AT&T customers that have come through flawlessly and we’ve been able to serve them,” Downs said. “However, we have had some that have hit our system, we know somebody’s tried calling but we haven’t been able to connect with them.”

While losing cell phone service like this doesn’t happen often, AT&T customer Madison Morrison said its important to be prepared for when it does.

“We were actually looking up long-distance walkie-talkies, just because something that can reach, you know 30 to 50 miles, just in case something like this were to happen again,” Morrison said. “He works out of town, I work here in town. Not being able to communicate with your family is very, very disheartening at times.”

Both the FBI and Homeland Security are looking into the outage to ensure it wasn’t the result of a cyber attack.

The Federal Communications Commission has been in touch with AT&T as well.