T-Mobile is one of America’s leading mobile networks, and they recently had a hiccup that caused a massive outage. As one of America’s largest companies, they have ties with numerous other mobile phone carriers and have one of the nation’s most extensive networks. Many times, when a cell phone carrier has a problem, it doesn’t affect others.
However, on June 15th, a hiccup in T-Mobile’s system caused an outage for theirs and many other cell phone carriers on both the national and local levels. And the rumors flew fast! One thing to be cautious about has false information. Still, with the capabilities that we have as people on online and social media platforms, you may find yourself that rumors can spread about things that aren’t true – such as cyberattacks.
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It Wasn’t a DDoS Attack.
The T-Mobile outage that affected a large portion of the U.S. was ruled not to be a DDoS attack.
While millions of Americans and customers flocked to their cell phone provider’s Facebook and social media pages to complain, numerous suspicions were thrown out there that made people think that there was a DDoS attack or Denial of Service attack. If this were true, it would have been one of the most significant attacks in the country of all time. It knocked out the service for AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and even some local carriers who rely on their systems (such as U.S. Cellular and a few others) to have connectivity issues. But the truth? It was just an outage.
The outage lasted for about 13 hours straight. The highways across America were riddled with trucks, almost like a military convoy in some places, where people were attempting to re-provision antennas to get a cell signal. What exactly was the problem that occurred? A supposed voice and data communication problem that ended up causing issues with people all over America.
What Sparked the Rumors?
This chart is what a Down Detector report looks like on a typical day for T-Mobile. The day T-Mobile was down, the chart was going nuts because millions of people were reporting outages all over the country.
First of all, many customers ended up using different sites to report the outages, including those such as DownDetector – one of the most popular disruptions reporting sites. What caused even more problems is that due to such a high volume of users flocking online, T-Mobile practically “broke the internet,” which caused even some ISP customers to have connectivity issues.
Once the images on the Down Detector website took effect, it looked like the entire country was covered in red on numerous platforms. This eventually sparked the rumors that it was a massive cyberattack against all of our U.S. technical institutions. The reason? With all of the terrorism going on and all of the increased cyberattacks since the COVID-19 pandemic, why wouldn’t this be impossible? The truth is, it’s not – but not this time.
So, What Caused the Outage that Took Out America?
The real culprit, or what T-Mobile tells us, is that it was a circuit problem and nothing more.
A circuit issue was the real culprit behind the outage. T-Mobile uses a third-party fiber provider, and when their backup methods halted, their data stream and voice stream ended up flooding their entire network and overloaded it. Of course, then everyone else and other factors (people flooding the network on their home and business internet providers) caused the outages that affected the rest of the country. This has sparked an international investigation by the FCC because numerous businesses and people were affected.
How Rumors Hurt
T-Mobile, as a whole, has been trending in the wrong direction for a while now. Whether it be spotty service or lack of security, T-Mobile is far from the top dog in the telecom sector.
Cyber-rumors like this can profoundly impact a business, and you must stay on top of them to correct them as quickly as possible. There are still reports being written and posted and customers complaining about the outage on June 15th, 2020. That’s because T-Mobile didn’t provide much of an explanation aside from the “fiber failure” excuse.
They’re still investigating what happened, and nobody’s heard anything since. While many 2G and 3G services and over the top (OTT) services like Google and Facetime were still accessible, it’s no wonder why they’re still being impacted. However, Rumors are still hurting T-Mobile’s integrity, and you don’t want this for your company.
So, How Can I Avoid Problems Like This?
Honestly, it would not be easy to have foreseen something on this great of a scale happening. While T-Mobile may not be the best cell service provider, it’s not the worst by a long shot.
For starters, you can switch to a quality VoIP service that will even use your phone through an over-the-top VoIP protocol thanks to 3CX software that your managed service provider uses. Along with this, having a highly trained team of IT professionals can help keep your system up, backed up, running smoothly, and adequately secured can also help avoid any significant hiccups like this.
Unfortunately, you may not be able to guarantee that your website will be running 100% of the time or that customers won’t have problems connecting to services that they may use from you. When this happens, an essential way to avoid those degrading complaints that can damage your company’s reputation is to be as open as possible about things with your customers. You can do this while maintaining maximum security. You also want to make sure that you reward your loyal users, employees, and customers after the issues have been resolved. Some of these problems can be avoided when you have an excellent data management solution provided by a qualified team of individuals to take care of you!