After The Explosion At The AT&T Building In Nashville, People Across The State Were Left With No Service. Yesterday Morning, AT&T Reported Their “Mobility Network Is Now Operating Normally.”
Photo: Smoke rises around the AT&T transmission center in downtown Nashville moments after the explosion on Friday morning.
On Christmas morning, an explosion at the AT&T building in Nashville left people across the state with no service. Over the past few days, there have been widespread service outages, but AT&T made significant progress on Monday to get things back to normal.
The bomb that went off on Christmas morning damaged over forty buildings in downtown Nashville. However, the damage to AT&T equipment led to damage spanning hundreds of miles, as thousands of customers were left without cell service or WiFi.
This left many Hamilton County residents confused and frustrated when they woke up on Christmas without any way to contact loved ones.
Chattanooga resident, Taquana Williams, said, “We couldn’t call friends or family on Christmas Day. I was wondering why am I not getting text messages, its Christmas I always get text messages on Christmas.”
With Covid-19 still on the rise, many Chattanoogans were not able to travel for the Holidays this year. For those who were only planning to make phone calls and video chats on Christmas, the outages were especially devastating.
Aurelia Dionicio, a Hamilton County resident already wasn’t able to visit her grandmother on Christmas, but she wasn’t able to call her either.
Dionicio said, “We hope she doesn’t think we forgot about her. We love her and were sad we haven’t been able to contact her.”
On Sunday, AT&T released a statement about the progress that had been made over the weekend. The statement said, “Significant progress was made in our restoration efforts overnight. Power was restored to 4 floors of the building. So far, more than 65% of mobility sites affected by the explosion on Friday have been restored. Yesterday, more than three feet of water was pumped out of the building’s basement, but access to the lower floors of the building is still limited.”
While additional equipment was being brought in to help with the recovery efforts, the company was confident they would have everything running smoothly again by Monday.
While AT&T did not provide specific information about the areas affected, outages were reported in eight states. Some merchants across these states were unable to process credit card transactions thanks to the outage.
On Monday morning, AT&T released a statement to let customers know their “mobility network is now operating normally.”
The statement went on to say, “We continue to manage power needs to prevent overloading the generators supporting our equipment. Recovery work will continue today as we address the few remaining services and customers that still may be impacted by this event. Another 23 disaster recovery technology and support trailers arrived in Nashville Sunday to help maintain and make repairs in the days ahead. This equipment will be critical as we maintain service and make repairs in the days ahead.”
Thousands of AT&T customers will be having all their data overage charges waived as a way to compensate for the outages. This would include over one thousand zip codes, including most of Southern Tennessee. The other states affected were Kentucky, Indiana, Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, and Missouri.
