T-Mobile users still reeling from outage

T-Mobile customers are still seething after a major outage on Tuesday that left many people across the country unable to text and call their friends and business associates.

The outage, which started Tuesday afternoon and lasted through the evening before being resolved, affected a wide swath of users, though T-Mobile said that only 5 percent of customers were affected. T-Mobile has yet to say what caused the problems.

"Our sole focus during the service disruption on Tuesday was to quickly restore normal service to affected customers," T-Mobile said in a statement on Wednesday. "We are now working to determine the root cause and facts surrounding the interruption."

After CNET News reported on the outage and asked readers to share their experience, dozens of e-mails poured in.

From a husband unable to connect with his pregnant wife, to small-business owners unable to reach clients, to people getting grief for seemingly ignoring text messages from their significant others, people wrote in with their grievances.

Electrician Casey French, of Flower Mound, Texas, said that the outage is a major issue for his business, given that he can't afford to sit in an office with a landline phone.

"This is a catastrophic blow to businesses like mine, losing a day or more of production means losing not only money, but potential new customers, which in this economy are extremely hard to come by already," French said.

T-Mobile, which confirmed the outage Tuesday afternoon, released an updated statement around 5 p.m. PST, saying that "some T-Mobile customers may be experiencing intermittent service disruptions impacting voice and some data services."

However, plenty of folks e-mailed me to say they were having more than intermittent problems.

Around 6:15 p.m., the company said it was making "good progress restoring voice and messaging service to affected customers." The company added that, "at this time, approximately 5 percent of T-Mobile customers are experiencing service disruptions."

From that point, though, another 50 people e-mailed me to say they were still having problems with their service--many saying that they had multiple phones that weren't working as well as friends who were also having problems of one variety or another.

Some questioned T-Mobile's 5 percent estimate, saying that nearly everyone they knew with T-Mobile was experiencing some sort of outage. (As of the second quarter, T-Mobile had 33.5 million subscribers, meaning that even if 5 percent of users were affected, that would still be more than 1.5 million people.)

John Bystrom, of Elk Grove Village, Ill., said he also doubted the 5 percent figure, given the number of people who packed a local store he stopped in to inquire about the outage. Bystrom said he had just switched from AT&T to T-Mobile to get the BlackBerry 8900, but now hopes to switch back to AT&T.

"Hopefully I can get out without being charged the fee since T-Mobile in my opinion has broken the contract first by not delivering a stable system," Bystrom said.

At 10:30 p.m., T-Mobile e-mailed another statement, to say that things had been resolved.

"T-Mobile confirms it has fully restored voice and text/picture messaging services for customers affected by intermittent service disruptions on Tuesday," the company said. "About five percent of our customers across various geographies were affected for much of Tuesday evening, and by late Tuesday PST their service was restored... We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused our customers."

Some took issue with the way T-Mobile handled the outage.

"My frustration with T-Mobile is not that they had an outage, but the way they buried their head in the sand," said Carlos Ovalle, an architect in Long Beach, Calif. "They have just about everyone's email and could have notified us of the issue. Had that been the case I could have immediately notified customers that rely on being able to reach me at a moment's notice."

Clarence Barnes, a TV and radio host in Los Angeles, said he also objected to how T-Mobile managed the issue. "The problem for me was that if you called my phone, it would say 'The number you dialed is no longer in service'," said Barnes who is looking for full-time work after the radio station where he worked switched formats. "If you get that message it generally means that the person no longer has that number or simply didn't pay the bill--either answer doesn't make me look that responsible."

Tuesday's outage is the latest blow for T-Mobile, which is still working through a month-long ordeal for its Sidekick service, in which some customers have lost their address books and many more are still waiting to get back other data, such as calendars, to-do lists, and photos.

Of course, T-Mobile customers are not the only ones with cell phone issues. AT&T customers regularly complain about service problems with their iPhones. An outage last year interrupted service for BlackBerry customers on various networks across North America. Earlier this year a cut fiber line left many AT&T customers in Silicon Valley without service.

On Wednesday, T-Mobile customers by and large had their service back, but many were still looking for answers. Bystrom said that several hours after calling customer care he got a call back offering a $5 credit. "When I protested that it was unacceptable (I) was pretty much told take it or leave it," Bystrom said.

[C0mmanderB0nd]

There is a huge difference between AT&T iPhone customers "complaining" about service and this kind of major outage.

If you really want to see people screaming bloody murder cut off 5% of the AT&T iPhone customers for a few hours on a weekday.... it would be anarchy!

[baggyguy1218]

I agree, this is a little overblown. I have an employee that has T-mobile like me and she would not shut up about it, as if losing a few minutes of texting would effect her life so much. I think its really overblown.

[badasscat]

In my experience, complaints from iPhone owners about AT&T's network are usually misplaced anyway. My wife's got an iPhone and I have an HTC Fuze. We have a business email account that gets forwarded to both of our phones (and we both have AT&T). Just last night, we were in a diner when an email came in to both of us with 3 large photo attachments. We both tried to download them - they came right up on my phone (literally within 1 second), but her iPhone just sat there "downloading" forever. She could never get them to come through. Again, we were sitting right next to each other, same network, same exact email, two different phones.

AT&T's not perfect, but most of the problems iPhone users have with it are actually problems with the iPhone.

[Mergatroid Mania]

I agree. Outages like this are a part of life in the data age. These people should learn not only to live with it, but to expect it.

As far as some people saying they doubt it was only 5%, do they have access to all the information needed to make an assessment like that? I doubt it. That's worse than a guess. They must think they have ESP or something.

[dfrisco]

@Mergatroid Mania

Expect outages? Really? Don't agree with you at all. If you pay for cable, and the cable goes out you would just sit there and say, well I expected this. You must not pay your bills (meaning you probably have your parents do that). If I am paying for a service, I EXPECT to get that service without interruption. If the provider can't give me that service without interruption then I want to either be reimbursed for the outage or I will move on to another company. Unfortunately in some areas people don't have choices.

I do think though that a $5 credit for half a day of lost cell service is a decent offer. My monthly cell bill is $90/30 = $3 per day. A $5 credit would work for me. I can't remember ever a time when the cable company reimbursed for an outage lasting a whole day or more which is why I no longer have cable, too many outages and overpriced service.

[tgray98]

The problem is that for business people like me we lost service for 8-10 hours with messages on incoming calls indicating that our numbers were no longer active or that we had not paid our bills. I spent a couple of hours explaining to customers while I didn't respond to their text message and why my phone indicated that I no longer had an active number. I have had the same number for 11 years so many people received this information. I am going to ask for compensation from T-Mobile based on the inconvenience and time spent on follow-up calls and messages to clients, friends, and family. T-Mobile should have immediately sent out an email to customers warning of possible problems ---- and it was much more than 5 percent. I have 4 phones in my family plan -- all in different states and all the phones had problems with voice and or text (intermittent but overall long time periods). I do not have a contract with T-Mobile so I can change my provider on a moments notice (and will as a matter of principle) if they do not respond fairly for the inconvenience and wasted time.
Tom Gray - President, Gray Consulting Services, Inc.

[reveng1]

CNet is the ONLY site that is making this worse than it really is. At least now we know they don't care for T-Mobile since they are trying to make it sound like T-Mobile almost caused Armageddon yesterday.

[badasscat]

Many people would argue that *any* widespread downtime for any large phone carrier is a huge issue.

It's difficult to "make this worse than it really is". It is unacceptable to have a minute of downtime on any telecom carrier. You should be demanding nothing less than 100% uptime for your money. Accept less than perfection and that is what you'll get.

[tsnyder91]

"You should be demanding nothing less than 100% uptime for your money." If you do this you are guaranteed to get a lifetime of disappointment from everyone you give your money to...expecting perfect from imperfect technologies made by imperfect humans is very silly.

[Mergatroid Mania]

Really.

"You should be demanding nothing less than 100% uptime for your money."

I hate to break this to you, but nothing humans make is perfect. Everything we make is flawed in some way and eventually wears out. Having ISPs and cellphone carriers have their networks go down is a fact of life. Get used to it.

Better keep a spare pair of underwear handy for the next unusually intense set of solar flairs that take out a few satellites. Judging from your reaction to a loss of 5% of one carriers customers, you're going to need the spare pair.

[Shinespark]

100% uptime? Are you kidding me? Do you know how many thousands of dollars companies pay to get three or even four 9s of reliability? Any wireless network as large as T-mobile's could not be expected to perform like that without prohibitively expensive redundancies that would drive the price point up tenfold.

[carbine68]

Well if you are on T-mobile you pay for what you get. Switch to a real carrier like at&t or Verizon.

[dubcopy]

The outage was pretty terrible. I'm not sure 5% is an accurate number. Question, is this the type of event that would allow me to exit my contract? Seems reasonable that if they can't provide service for an extended period of time I should get to leave.

[Outside_Looking_In]

What's next for these folks? Just last month the hardware that handles their Sidekick line of phones experienced a breakdown that created headaches for many who have that phone...

[drochester]

As a T-Mobile customer, I have not seen these outages happen all that often. During the outage, I still had voice service. People need to get a grip and realize that there will be instances when these outages will occur. And quite frankly, any business owner that relies solely on cell phone service is asking for trouble. Ante up for voicemail so that you're not tied to your desk and can call in to retrieve messages if necessary.

[Mergatroid Mania]

Agreed 100%. People are getting spoiled and think they can have it all all the time.

It's called life and they better get used to it.

Wow. You youngsters amaze me. It's obvious you grew up relatively recently, where "Take what we give you" has been around ever since you can remember and it's normal to you. As far as voicemail, don't his calls go directly to VM if he turns off his phone? Shouldn't he expect the same to happen if Tmobile's "service" goes down???

[baggyguy1218]

at least we dont lose 3G service completely. Thats why Im not with At&t. I really like T-mobile, its well worht the money I pay.

[ihackmore]

Anyone with high speed internet access, speakers or headphones, microphone, and a credit or debit card can create an immediate backup when phone service (cellular or land line) is lost. Just create a Skype account and pony up for a phone number. Depending on what services are affected by the outage, you can probably call into your phone's voice mail and record a new message with the new number. It's cheaper than carrying around an extra phone with its own monthly fees from a different provider. Once the outage is over, you don't have to pay monthly fees to Skype, though any credit left will eventually expire if not used.

[filipiak]

Or, just put a VOIP app on your smart phone (if you have one). Mine uses my real phone number, so there's no need to have a service which requires you to use a different one. It also ties into my phone's contact list, so there's nothing extra to remember or do - just switch to WiFi, and you're back in business. (As long as you stay in one place, that is.)

[tsnyder91]

Man, I hated outages like this when I worked with T-Mobile and other service providers in the past. The $5 dollar credit is more than enough. By not accepting it you are acknowledging that you pay way less for a service than what its true value is. Lets say you pay 100 a month for one line, that's less that 4 bucks a day. They offered you more than a full days credit and you whine? How much do you want? If you say a free month you are saying that the service is actually worth 100 bucks for however long the outage was to you. There is NO provider that will give you PERFECT service...get educated about your coverage area and get your expectations straight. Technology fails, it sucks, get over it. People can be so needy, and sensationalistic journalism doesn't help.

[alexacker]

Finally... someone with some logic! Hope this shuts the whiners up....

[ekuzco]

That stupid $18 upgrade fee doesn't seem to be helping them any....

[hyperlexic]

uh.. i still don't have internet access on my G1. T-Mobile forums are full of people still without full service

[deepen05]

THATS WHY T-MOBILE SUCKS! Switched to AT&T in March, and lovin it ever since with my iPHONE 3G!

[Absolution2009]

Verizon rocks, period!

[swapshopr]

Get over it. In the past 5 years this is the only major issue I have had with my T-Mobile service. Other sites & services that I deal with have outages all the time. It's funny to me to see everyone threatening to cancel their service over one incident. The Side Kick thing was a little different but then again owning a Side Kick is pretty much like having a Sky Pager. Do people really still use those?

[hyperlexic]

I'm not that upset about the outage; what upsets me is the company sending the "all is well" message to news agencies. it's not, and cnet should maybe take a peek at the tmobile forums before parroting what t-mobile's PR people have passed to them.

[s300m]

weirdo

[supermanjamil]

You think this outage could be related to T-Mobile being hacked during early Spring 2009? Another attack Tuesday sounds likely, especially when was so easy for these guys, They got everything SSN, Credit Card Numbers, Billing Addresses and etc. T-Mobile sounds sloppy I believe its an inside job too. This sounds like a Denial Of Service attack to me.

[jlopezcnet]

This is way overblown. I have seen more outages on Verizon and AT&T as well as dropped calls. I have had tmobile for my home service since 2004 and this is the first and only time i've had an outage.

I work in IT and I have had to deal with many vendors. It is always a headache dealing with AT&T and Verizon.

Ironically no one I have worked for uses Sprint for their business needs.

[pmacsf]

I'm not sure I would count the act of sabotage in cutting the fiber optic cable in the silicon valley last year as AT&T's fault.

[Big_G77]

I've been a T-Mobile customer for a while, and as bad as it was, it's not that big of a deal, so you lost a couple of hours (for personal use), and like an earlier post said, you shouldn't really be relying on your cellphone solely for business, I mean damn, c'mon even a magic jack for business might be ok for you. People really need to reassess how they handle things. And no, I'm not saying T-Mobile is off the hook, the way they dealt with it is absolutely insesitive, you guys dropped the ball, a little bit of consideration from a huge company should be in order, and not a half assed apology, and a haughty attitude with the feeling of "sorry, that's the way it is, take it or leave"
Things like this happen, its how they handle the after effects that needs some tweaking...

[vinceiscool]

i know this situation is probably blown way out of proportion, but let me ask this. Aren't we the customer expected to pay our bill every month? If the answer is yes, shouldn't the company provide service when its needed? If i missed paying my bill they would charge me for a late fee, you cant tell them that life happens hoping they would forget about it.

[vinceiscool]

Let me ask this. Are you expected to pay your bill? If thats a yes, then can't you expect for the service you paid for. If I dont pay they will charge me a late fee, you cant just say that life happens and expect them to drop the fact that I didn't pay my bill. We'll its the same for the company, they cant just drop service and say life happens hoping that the consumers will forgive them.