T-Mobile's nationwide outage is over: What went wrong here (update)

T-Mobile's nationwide outage is over: What went wrong here (update)

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on June 15 during the T-Mobile network outage; we have updated it as an overview of the causes of the T-Mobile network outage has been released.

Had problems with your cell phone connection on Monday (June 15)? You were not alone. Cell phone users flocked to social media and fault-tracking sites to report problems making calls.

However, the issue, which centered on T-Mobile's cellular network, was resolved as of 1 a.m. ET Tuesday, with T-Mobile reporting that voice and text service had been restored.

So what happened? According to a Monday report from DownDetector.com, the trouble began around noon ET on June 15, with most users complaining that their calls were disconnected. DownDirector reported that users on other carriers were experiencing the same outage.

The outage affected only one carrier, and the ripple effect was found to extend to other service customers calling the affected carriers.

Tom's Guide staff were able to use Verizon and AT&T phones to call other customers on those networks; T-Mobile phones were able to dial out, but calls placed to those phones failed.

Neville Ray, T-Mobile's president of technology, confirmed on Twitter on Monday that there are "voice and data issues affecting customers nationwide." Ray said T-Mobile engineers are working to restore service.

During the outage, we contacted AT&T and a spokesperson told us that the carrier's network was "working normally."

AT&T also said on Twitter that the problem may be related to its customers trying to connect to other networks.

Similarly, a Verizon spokesperson said that all is well with Verizon's network as well. 'Verizon's network is doing well. 'We are aware that other carriers are having issues with their networks. Calls with that carrier may result in error messages."

"We are aware that Verizon is having problems with their network,"

and that "Verizon has been working with us for some time.

According to a T-Mobile blog post Tuesday night, T-Mobile engineers have pinpointed a dedicated fiber line failure from a third-party provider in the southeastern US as the cause of the problem. T-Mobile's Ray writes, "This happens on every mobile network, so we've been working with our vendors to build in redundancy and resiliency to ensure that this type of line failure does not impact our customers."

"This redundancy was avenged, resulting in an overloaded situation, compounded by a host of other factors.

The overload in the Southeast resulted in capacity issues throughout the IP Multimedia Subsystem network, which supports voice calls in LTE, Ray said. As a result, data connections and non-VoLTE services such as FaceTime and WhatsApp continued to function, but voice calls failed.

"We are working with the IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and IP vendors to add permanent additional safeguards to prevent this from happening again, and we continue to work to determine the cause of the initial overload failure," Ray said, also apologizing for the failure.

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