Research has shown that people are becoming increasingly dependent on their cellular phones, and an AT&T outage this week highlighted just how dependent we’ve become on cell service.
From calls to mom and favorite social media platforms to financial information and work emails, many people rely on their phone for essential tasks. It makes sense that losing service would make us anxious.
While landlines may seem like an option when cell service is down, data shows that they are becoming rare. Indeed, an estimated 72.6% of adults and 81.9% of children in the U.S. lived in wireless-only households during the first six months of 2022, said the National Center for Health Statistics.
“Landlines have practically reached the status of urban legend in a nation where connecting over mobiles with the people you want – at the exact moments you want, on the precise platforms you prefer – feels fundamental enough to be a Constitutional right,” the Associated Press said this week.
According to Downdetector data cited by CBS News, there was a peak of 70,000 service reports during the outage this week. As of noon ET Thursday, there were still 40,000 reports, but by 2:10 p.m. AT&T said that wireless service had been restored to all of its customers.
“Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack,” the company said Thursday evening. “We are continuing our assessment of today’s outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve.”
National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby said that the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were also looking into the incident.
While the service was down, emergency lines were briefly flooded with people calling 911 to make sure their phones were working, per The Washington Post. It warned people not to do that, as it can impact emergency responses.
Although the outage impacted thousands, Michael Hodel, a stock analyst at Morningstar Research Services LLC, said he doesn’t think the incident will drive people to get their landlines back. Shira Ovide of The Washington Post agreed.
“But it’s worth making a backup plan in case you need help, or just to call the burger place when cellphones fail,” she said.
Here are some of those backup plans:
· Find WiFi that your phone can connect to – sometimes this type of internet access is available at public places such as Starbucks stores and libraries.
· Invest in a portable WiFi hotspot, such as the ones ranked here by The New York Times.
· Find a landline phone, if possible.
· Check out this Google map of payphones in the U.S.
· USA Today recommends having easy access to cash, paper documents, radios.