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FYI from a news tech site

February 02, 2009
Updated: AT&T suffering data network outage in Texas

AT&T appears to be suffering a major outage of its data networking in Texas, including Houston. Customers who use either its 3G or older EDGE networks are unable to use any data services, including Web and e-mail access.

imageOn my iPhone, I'm not seeing either the E or 3G indicators on my home screen. Attempts to access the Web or e-mail result in error messages.

The Dataoutages.com blog reports the outage started about 9:40 a.m. CST. AT&T's tech support says there's no ETA on a fix, according to the site.

Currently, a call to AT&T's tech support warns customers of "extremely long hold times".

Complaints posted to Twitter indicate the outage is affecting at least Houston, Austin and Hardin County. There are also indications other areas, including Washington, D.C., are experiencing outages.

I've placed a call to an AT&T spokesman, and will update once I know more.

Update: MySA, the Web site for our sister paper, the San Antonio Express-News, has some details.

    Dallas-based wireless telecommunications giant AT&T Inc. has suffered a wireless network outage across San Antonio and other parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.


    AT&T spokesman Mike Barger said it's unclear how soon the company can fix the problem.

    "We're working on it right now," he said.

    The outage is the result of cut in a large-capacity fiber-optic line, Barger added.

Update 2.0: Here's AT&T's official statement, from Houston-area spokesman Dan Feldstein:

    Due to a cable cut, some AT&T customers in South Texas are currently not able to access data services from their wireless devices. All voice services are operating normally.  AT&T technicians are at the site of the cable cut at this time, and will work to have this issue resolved as soon as possible. We will provide more information as it becomes available.

I'm hearing from people via e-mail and on Twitter who think the problem is with their own phones. Why doesn't AT&T send out a text-message blast to affected customers letting them know what's up? That would be a lot more customer-friendly than reminding them to watch American Idol.

A network status Web page also would be nice.

Update 3.0: AT&T reports that its 2G services - such as the EDGE network - are back up. I'm getting reports of BlackBerry users who are now getting mail, and you can see some of those in the comments.

AT&T says remaining data services should be back up some time today.

And I'm now seeing 3G service on my own iPhone, with e-mail and Web access working again.