UPDATED 2:47 P.M.
“We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them. 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.” — AT&T Statement
The company declined to tell WMBD Radio News just how many customers in this area were impacted by the outage.
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PEORIA, Ill. –The City of Peoria says that the Peoria Emergency Communications Center is operational in the wake of a national cellular outage that began early Thursday morning nationwide.
Over 73,000 AT&T customers have lost their ability to make cell phone calls, text or reach emergency services with 911. Users of Verizon, T-Mobile and US Cellular have also faced disruptions.
If your cell service has been affected by the outages and you can’t get through to 911, try using a landline…or have a friend, neighbor or family member call 911 for you.
Peoria Emergency Communications Director Brandon Blayney says if you have an i-Phone, you may get the SOS message to make a call to 911.
“They would use the US Cellular tower to make that call, instead of AT&T. So, they’re not going to use US Cellular’s tower for your normal cell phone call, but if you have to make a 911 call, that’s when they would use that tower to complete that 911 call,” Blayney said.
Blayney says he doesn’t have the newest iPhone model which has the “SOC” function, but he did receive the SOS on his phone.
“Once we were alerted this (the outages) happened, I actually made a test 911 call with my phone, and was able to get through to the Peoria 911 Center here,” Blayney said.
AT&T says it is working “urgently” to restore service to over 73,000 customers that have lost service during the outages.
Our own attempts to contact AT&T have been unsuccessful. We have also reached out to officials in Tazewell and Woodford Counties to find out how they’re impacted, so far, to no avail.
PEORIA, Ill. — The City of Peoria says the Peoria Emergency Communications Center is still operational amid cellular outages, most notably affecting AT&T customers that began early Thursday morning.
If you are a customer affected by the outages and cannot get through on 9-1-1, try calling from a land line. If you are unable to, try to get a hold of a friend, neighbor or family member who is a customer of a different carrier and ask them to call 9-1-1 on your behalf.
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