Storm Causes AT&T Outage Across Midwest

dstates writes "AT&T left users across several Midwestern states without cellular phone service yesterday. The outage apparently resulted from a power failure at a Michigan switching center and spread to affect level3 Internet communications. The powerful windstorm also left 400,000 users without electricity. Interestingly, except for a few reports in Chicago and Indianapolis papers, AT&T has managed to keep this out of the mainstream media. Widespread communication failures also followed Hurricane Ike in Texas earlier this year. With the increasing trend for users to drop landlines and rely only on cell phones, this is becoming an emergency preparedness issue." Yes this included me. Still does. At least my office still has power — maybe we'll just camp here tonight. :)

Comments

Re:Roaming?

[bogaboga]

Does this kind of situation explain why we in North America are a little bit "behind" Europeans and Asians when it comes to the "cell phone" and exploiting its maximum potential?

I hear the "cell phone" elsewhere in the world is capable of so much more than simply making calls and texting, which are the bulk of what we use cell phones for over here.