AT&T customers’ Internet service disrupted
Around 7,500 AT&T customers in northern Atlanta were without Internet service for several hours Thursday after the company said it experienced a router problem.
Spokesman Lance Skelly said it would take a few days to complete an assessment of the problem, but it appeared it was caused by a defective card in a router. Skelly said only Internet service was affected and not mobile phone service.
“The situation was investigated and repaired as quickly as possible, and services have now been restored completely,” Skelly said Thursday afternoon.
The problem, however, caused headaches for many corporate customers who purchase Ethernet services wholesale or retail from AT&T to provide Internet, voice and video broadcast services to their own clients, according to Kraig Beahn, chief executive officer of L2Networks.
Beahn said L2Networks’ Ethernet service was disrupted from just after noon until around 3:40 p.m. “We had at least several hundred locations that we service in the Atlanta area that were either directly or indirectly affected,” Beahn said.
He said the outage also affected other carriers’ ability to provide similar services, including Qwest, CenturyLink, Deltacom, Earthlink and a number of smaller telecommunication providers.
Beahn said his company was “still not clear what took place. We’re still digging for information,” he said.
“We apologize for the inconvenience this situation caused for some of our customers,” said Skelly, the AT&T spokesman.
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
69 comments Add your comment
Dr.Biz
September 20th, 2012
8:28 pm
I didn’t notice anything. I have U-verse.
eileen truman
September 20th, 2012
8:30 pm
This happened to me today. I believe it was a marketing ploy to get people to upgrade to a new service.
need4speed
September 20th, 2012
8:34 pm
OneRing networks who provides our fiber ring service told us a fiber optic cable was cut. What is the REAL cause?
observor
September 20th, 2012
8:36 pm
Our office in Alpharetta was without internet for 3+ hours today. As a person that works for an IT company, I can say its absurd that AT&T doesn’t have better redundancy and back up capabilities.
Trendy iPhone user
September 20th, 2012
8:49 pm
I hope it works tomorrow as I will be in line at the Apple Storte. In fact I am leaving at 4AM
ed
September 20th, 2012
8:49 pm
For once ATT at least acknowledged the outage. That’s a first.
sasso
September 20th, 2012
9:02 pm
ATT DSL service–terrible. It goes out 6-7 times each day for 10-15 minutes with some weird error message on the computer. I’m dumping dsl and going with comcast cable and phone.
I hate AT&T
September 20th, 2012
9:13 pm
We live in an chronic outage area — 1 to 5 days, every few months. We NEVER get the credit promised.
When they sent the you-must-switch-to-Uverse-or-else letter, I wasted a day of my life with the technicians and then tech support until they told me that my address was not in the coverage area. HELLO? Can’t they figure that out *before* sending the letter?
Last month, they charged us for internet overage. When I called, they said they sent notification by email to the default @bellsouth account that we set up years ago. They said that was the only way they had for contacting us. HELLO? We pay our bill every month. I’m sure the US mail would have worked fine. When I got mad, the lady literally hung up on me.
We are switching tomorrow. HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?
Ralph
September 20th, 2012
9:17 pm
Bad router card, “still not clear what took place. We’re still digging for information,” and cut fiber optic cable.
Maybe they just don’t want to tell us the hamster wheel that powers their network froze up, and nobody could find any WD-40.
ATT sucks
September 20th, 2012
9:23 pm
I hate ATT, there service is terrible, if it works it not good and they charge useless fees, they need to be investigated
Worm
September 20th, 2012
9:25 pm
I’m changing providers as fast as possible!
Norbert
September 20th, 2012
9:32 pm
They are horribly unreliable; our service was down for over 24 hours on a recent weekend, and had all the hallmarks of a planned outage, which they didn’t notify customers about or acknowledge (couldn’t get anyone to admit to this, but they also would not deny it and refused to let me speak to a technician to explain the problem…my hunch was there was some kind of network upgrade going on related to the new iphone…). Had to threaten to cancel service just to be able to speak to someone in the US, unreal.
lego lunatic
September 20th, 2012
9:56 pm
ATT disconnected my DSL service in error 2 weeks ago. When i callled to have it reconnected, they told me they were phasing out DSL in my area and strongarmed me into uverse service. I was transfered 7x’s because none of the sorry@ss reps knew what to do. What a bunch of numbnuts.
America's Terrible Telicom
September 20th, 2012
9:58 pm
Our apartment building was without dsl service for four days because a technician who was installing a neighbor’s UVerse botched the job.I was livid.Finally on Saturday after many promises to fix our problem I switched to Clear wireless.Best decision I made.
And last year my on line bill pay account was over debited by 150.00.This went on for three weeks.No apologies from this so called company.
AT&T’s service is equal to what I sift from my cats litter boxes.
Annoyed
September 20th, 2012
10:17 pm
AT&T is the worst provider. I never had so many issues. The customer service SUCKS and to have one simple question answered you are transferred 6 to 7 times per call. I mean really? Is this how you run a company? Incompetent workers, overpaid CEOs and the customer suffers. Thanks AT&T
Captain Obvious
September 20th, 2012
10:28 pm
Everything AT&T touches goes to $H!T! Wireless, Phone, Internet – it doesn’t matter, they can find a way to screw it all up in new and creative ways.
I used to think nobody would ever be worst than Comcast – now it’s a contest. The sad thing is I can’t find anyone to say anything good about either of them!
walter mathis
September 20th, 2012
10:38 pm
Enter your comments here
IT Insight
September 20th, 2012
10:51 pm
It was probably a back-up configuration card that was left inside one of the routers LOL and as the routers stepped back up I’ll bet the bad config was promulgated across the network and it all hosed … XD someone doesn’t keep track of their equipment, or what?
whm
September 20th, 2012
11:07 pm
Awful service. Office was threatened with the “go uverse or else. we are not supporting dsl anymore.” Went along with their extortion. That was three months ago. They postponed install at least three times since then. Still have not installed it. Went to website to look at status. Scheduled for 2024. No typo here. two thousand twenty four. I guess they are supporting DSL a little longer than they think. It gets better. Early August one of their little eager beaver sales people calls and says “I see where you still have DSL. You need to switch to Uverse”, and starts her sales pitch like this is the first time we had been extorted. She seemed very surprised when told we had been scheduled and stood up. When our contract for regular service was up for renewal six months ago, they quoted one price, then billed a much higher price. Sales rep who quoted price would not return email (of course they will not give a phone number to reach them again.) Had to start over with another rep, via phone call who quoted a different price (actually better) but again billed too much. Again, no response via email. On to third rep via phone. At least got billed close to what they quoted third time. They are entirely too big, and should be broken down into Baby bells again. Just awful to work with. I give them credit for one thing. They remain polite, but they are truly incompetent. They need to allocate more resources to customer service and quality product, and less to selling bundles and more features they can not support, install, or bill correctly.
Laurie
September 20th, 2012
11:40 pm
No problem here with the outage. I got 1/2 a day off work.
another comment
September 21st, 2012
12:06 am
my cousin in Florida works for AT&T she is legally blind. She works in Customer Support. She was lured away from Time Warner several years ago where she also worked in Customer Support, to make about $3 more per hour and better benefits. She was not hired for sales. She would never have accepted a sales position due to her disability. Then as soon as they AT&T get U-verse, they decide that custimer service should also try to sell it everytime someone calls in about anything. She had an elderly lady call in to cancel her husband’s phone after he had died 3 days earlier, she was expected to still sell the lady up to U-verse. She did not. She got written up for it, but on warning that she could be fired, if she ever fails to not try to sell U-verse again. She said she is so afraid of loosing her job and her benefits. She is raising 3 grandchildren, her husband is disabled but turned down for Social Security Disability, so she is the sole support of her family. I told her if they fired her she would have a good suit against AT&T for discrimination since she is Blind.
Be afraid, very afraid
September 21st, 2012
1:00 am
I worked at Verizon Wireless and it is scary to see who works there and the mindset, or lack of one, they have.
If most people knew who works at the telecommunication and utility companies, they would be afraid of what is coming….a total prolonged outage on a major scale.
What happens when people don’t give a damn……a democratic America, a melting pot of don’t give a flying F.
Jack Nicholson
September 21st, 2012
1:09 am
This county needs an enema.
Atlantarama
September 21st, 2012
1:19 am
I switched from Comcast to U-Verse and have had no problems with their customer service. I’m happy with it.
Even though the internet isn’t as fast, all things considered, U-Verse beats Comcast, especially their TV service.
Jumbo
September 21st, 2012
1:34 am
If AT&T shut off it’s network for a week people would be crying like babies and begging AT&T to turn it back on. Yes, all other carriers’ traffic rides across AT&T’s network. A lot of people hate AT&T, but the truth is you couldn’t live without them.
pa allison
September 21st, 2012
3:00 am
I’m curious about outage date (Thursday) stated above. My outage was just after noon until 3:30 – 4:00 on WEDNESDAY during the rain. No outage at all on Thursday. I agree with most comments posted here, however, the biggest problem I have is their extremely annoying marketing letters. I receive at 2-3 per week offering services I already have or their U-Verse which I have no intention to switching to. I’ve had Directv for 3 years (formerly Charter customer) and absolutely love it. We experience some very short outages during extremely bad storms but that still only relates to 1/1000 over previous service. Clearest picture ever! With that being said, you still can’t beat AT&T’s phone system – have home & cell – unbeatable service – no outages or downtown and of course I have the roll over minutes which is fantastic. Still my only complaint is their JUNK MAIL – I have other things to do than spend and hour or so per week at the shredder!
Vince
September 21st, 2012
5:17 am
Glad I dumped my DSL service a month ago, which was giving me about 1 Mbps (if I was lucky) and couldn’t provide me anything faster. I switched to Comcast and now get 25 Mbps and have been rock solid. Dumping cell service this weekend as well and can’t wait to do that. Our cell phones used to work at our house up to about 18 months ago, and now they don’t. AT&T’s response–”Uhh, did you try X, Y or Z?” How about I try switching providers instead.
JoeyMc
September 21st, 2012
6:00 am
Dumped AT&T long time ago. Lousy service, overpriced, and slow as crap. Comcast a MUCH better choice.
ramblwrk68
September 21st, 2012
6:53 am
I have been having random outages the last few weeks, seem to lose DNS access, re-booting the DSL modem cleared things up for a few hours, then back to the same issue. Had to go to a local McDonalds to get wi-fi a couple of times when the Help Desk said it was a known outage, and would last several hours (it didn’t). I live in the south Gwinnett area, Shiloh cluster.
heywondering
September 21st, 2012
7:02 am
it works fine in Duluth,GA. I’ve been with them 2 years & never had a problem!! I switched from Charter, which was very,very bad. Every time it got hot (weather wise) Charter service would go out?
Terrence Y.
September 21st, 2012
7:10 am
AT&T fired nearly most all of the former BellSouth Customer Service reps and Account Managers because they made too much money. They could not fire the Field Techs because they are union. I know this to be true because my brother is a Field Tech. AT&T buying BellSouth was the worst thing that could have happened. AT&T SUX.
Then LEAVE
September 21st, 2012
7:12 am
If you don’t like AT&T then LEAVE. I am tired of hearing the complaints all the time. Dang people if you don’t like it then go somewhere else.
Michael
September 21st, 2012
7:19 am
In related news, productivity yesterday skyrocketed in northern Atlanta.
jose
September 21st, 2012
7:29 am
Life is so much better without AT&T. Never will I be involve with any AT&T products and services. After 26 years, they started to go downhill for me about five years ago. Nothing but problems from that point. Now, I am waiting on my refund from overpayment to them. I wonder how long will it take them to send it. I have better service, better customer service, pay less for service, no outage, faster speeds, clear phone lines, and better equipment. What suck the most was, why would you ask or demand someone to a two year contract when they have already given you more twenty plus years as being a customer to your business? When companies do this, you are always trap within their nonsense of poor service to you.
Reality Check
September 21st, 2012
7:36 am
@ “Then LEAVE”: If you don’t like AT&T then LEAVE. I am tired of hearing the complaints all the time. Dang people if you don’t like it then go somewhere else.
Who in the h3!! are you! Who gives a flying-flip what you’re tired of! If you don’t like people expressing their opinions, venting and/or exercising their right to free speech on a public forum blog, then YOU go somewhere else! @$$-wipe!!!
Shelley
September 21st, 2012
7:59 am
When I had At&t it would go out several times a day for 10+ minutes, sometimes longer- this story must have gotten attention because corporate customers were affected, residential customers experience this daily- I can’t believe anyone still uses At&t and that they have not been investigated for fraud with all of their billing scams- over billing and incorrect billing is a common problem.
Allison Wonderland
September 21st, 2012
8:06 am
It effected our office in Vinings all afternoon. As a payroll Company, this could have been a major disaster if it occured on Wednesday when 99% of payrolls are processed.
jose
September 21st, 2012
8:17 am
When you do decide to leave AT&T, just be prepared for a long process of BS from AT&T. If you decide to keep your phone numbers when you leave, just be prepared for a living nightmare. After I left this summer with my phone numbers, they still have my account open as if I am going to be that FOOL to come back to them. I received a letter from them as Dear Value Customer. BS.
AT&T isn’t no BellSouth. They are following the footsteps of MCIWorldcom. We all know about what they done in communication.
Ray B.
September 21st, 2012
8:22 am
My AT&T Aircard 875u failed recently and I called AT&T for a replacement. After a series of phone calls w/ their sales and tech people they finally admitted that although their map shows me squarely in a 3g area what I really have access to is a 2g/3g network and that none of their current aircards can work in that network environment (they need 3g/4g to function properly). So what did AT&T suggest? That I buy a replacement 875u on ebay or some similar site! BTW – 2g/3g service is terrible. I get dropped constantly and (using speedtest.net) have clocked download speeds as slow as .03mbps, i.e., much worse than dial-up.Meanwhile they call and threaten me with a cutoff if I won’t “upgrade” my contract from a grandfathered unlimited to a 5GB max/month. Very snotty callers who are bullying customers with overt threats. A truly great company. We should let them buy out some of the others so that this quality of service and support can be made available more widely.
Mark
September 21st, 2012
8:29 am
I live in Cobb county & have UVerse – never had a problem. Comcast was an absolute nightmare; worst company I ever dealt with.
Bino
September 21st, 2012
8:38 am
I agree with Mark….never have had a problem with UVerse as compared to Comcast…always walk in to a local AT&T store for all of my needs vs. calling…store staff is always helpful and friendly and go out of their way to find me the best deal
Butch
September 21st, 2012
8:38 am
All the telecom and cable providers suck really. Even if you switch, you just trade one set of problems for another in the end.
ITS ALL BUSHS FAULT
September 21st, 2012
8:46 am
ATT, VZ, COMCAST all run by Republicon inbreds….
Carlos
September 21st, 2012
8:56 am
Back in olden times, you could call or write your Public Service Commission and ATT (BellSouth) would fix your problem in a heartbeat. Today’s service is the product of deregulation. ATT can get away with almost no customer service because they almost have a monopoly and the few other companies in the business are just as bad. It’s like an unspoken agreement between 2-3 companies – let’s split the market, charge whatever maximizes all our profits and not spend anything on providing reliable customer service. They all win, customers all lose. Market power gone mad.
ITS ALL BUSHS FAULT
September 21st, 2012
8:58 am
ATT mantra , no service no problem . You miss a payment you have a problem.
What's an in ter net?
September 21st, 2012
9:07 am
I was reading a book by candlelight last night so I didn’t notice anything.
Cindy
September 21st, 2012
9:17 am
this was the 2nd serious issue of TI outages that are company has experienced in the last 8 days. The only day we’ve actually had full service all day in the last 8 days was Wednesday. For a company that owns the copper these lines run through, they clearly don’t know ANYTHING about customer service or maintenance. They are poster children for incompetent morons.
Whirled Peas
September 21st, 2012
9:17 am
We must be talking about a different company. I have had Bellsouth (now AT&T) DSL for nearly 14 years and have not had a lick of a problem with it. When my router went bad, they worked diligently with me to identify and isolate the problem and charged me nothing although it wasn’t their problem.
John
September 21st, 2012
9:29 am
Our office in Gainesville lost internet and phone service for a little over 3 hours yesterday. Which meant our customers could not reach us via our office phones nor send us email(s). We had to use our cell phones to contact customers. Not good AT&T.
Bobby
September 21st, 2012
9:31 am
I have U-verse and have had no problems. I’ve been quite happy with them.
RGB
September 21st, 2012
9:42 am
Having read the occasional blogs on AT&T, one constant is the poor opinion of their service reps–which I generally share. The company does a poor job in both selecting and training people. One the wireless side, AT&T always ranks dead last in customer service, so the management of the company apparently isn’t disturbed by their repeated poor showings. Monopoly is in their DNA and they do not view customer service as a differentiator. But #1 Verizon does.
I’ve dropped most AT&T services because of poor customer service and can’t envision an opportunity where I’d consider returning to them. Their Uverse mailings to me are simply expenses on their part that they’ll continue to pay for no reason. Seems the company will do anything to get customers to come back to them EXCEPT fix their glaring customer service issues.
On a contrary and rare note, I did contact an AT&T service rep a few days ago, was treated nicely, and she fixed my problem within 90 seconds. She possessed a slight Southern accent which, in my opinion, made all the difference! My thanks to her.
Becky
September 21st, 2012
9:45 am
7500 customers? Really? I heard from folks all over Gwinnett county and my company had no phone or internet for over 3 hours yesterday. They had outages as far north as Cumming. I suspect the number of folks that experienced this snafu was more like 75,000!
Inever
September 21st, 2012
9:46 am
have problems with AT&T internet service in Norcross,Never have problems with t-mobile cell service or my cable TV. I must be really living right?
Angie
September 21st, 2012
9:57 am
I think if you haven’t had problems with AT&T, you should count youself in the fortunate minority. There is a reason Clark Howard refers to them as “AT&T Customer no-service.” The other telecoms aren’t much better but I know I’ve never had rudeness or billing issues like my sister is experiencing with AT&T when I’ve dealth with Verizon, Comcast, Charter, or Dish Network.
Angie
September 21st, 2012
9:57 am
**Should be dealt not dealth.
gj2001
September 21st, 2012
10:02 am
Wah, Wah, Wah. The carriers and ISP’s all have outages. They will continue to have outages.
I just switched from comcast hi-speed internet to at&t uverse. my neighbors just had a comcast outage while uverse remained up…. no doubt i will experience an outage with uverse… but until my rates with at&t approach the rates of comcast i will stay with at&t for the time being.
I have been working on a global mpls access support network for the past 10years… and yes we have outages too. it’s going to happen.
Get Over It
September 21st, 2012
10:08 am
Do you really think that AT&T is the only company that occasionally has an outage? Look around you, everything we use has something to do with technology. Maybe it was something internal that took a while to figure out. I DON’T think they are as good as Bellsouth was and they definitely don’t care as much about their customers or employees as Bellsouth did, but come on, get over it! Go for a walk, read a book, work on something else for a few hours…I did!! In the big scheme of things…is the internet going out for a few hours really something to compain about?? Sure, it was inconvenient for some of us but i know for a fact they they were working to fix the problem all day! Get over it!!
Mark
September 21st, 2012
10:17 am
I’ve had ATT DSL for several years now and have never had a problem.
MelR
September 21st, 2012
10:47 am
used att dsl for 1 year–terrible service, slow, frequent outages in cobb county—switched to comcast—more expensive, but much faster and no outages yet. ATT–very poorly run company.
AtlJack
September 21st, 2012
10:55 am
my service went out and AT&T tech support said it was NOT a network problem but my Uverse box.
Hmmmm
travis
September 21st, 2012
11:13 am
My Cat’s Breath Smells like Cat Food!
witherig
September 21st, 2012
11:43 am
the financial institutions were down also so for all of you that tried to go into your account and see or transfer balances could not…. boy did we here about it and it was not our fault……
HAD VIRUS FOR 8 MONTHS THIS YEAR
September 21st, 2012
12:34 pm
My only problem besides talking to 100 people before finding the right one is the deception of paying monthly for tech support for your DSL internet & finding out if the problem can’t be fixed over the phone you will AGAIN have to pay to have a tech to come to your house. That should be included with the monthly fee that you have to pay. My computer has a virus that my son was on the phone with AT & T Tech support for 4 hours & still couldn’t get it off, but thankfully I have found that not every computer geek works for AT & T. There are those that are quicker & cheaper & their work is just as good if not better.
Zewt
September 21st, 2012
12:40 pm
Yeah, AT&T is horrible. My DSL was out for a week and they never fixed the problem then wanted to transfer me 8x to India. I said to hell with them. I have Charter now, so much better.
Ron
September 21st, 2012
12:51 pm
I ditched ATT for Comcast internet over a year ago. I average 36MBps down and 6 up, service is rock solid. Happily a non-ATT customer for life.
Jeffrey
September 21st, 2012
1:55 pm
My friend was choking on food yesterday and I needed the Internet to Google the Heimlich Maneuver so I could save his life. But my Internet service was with AT&T, which at the time was down. I could not get the information I needed, so my friend died.
Thanks a lot AT&T.
RGB
September 21st, 2012
3:53 pm
?
jerome K
September 21st, 2012
8:15 pm
how does att DsL stay in business? It’s slow and their “service” is terrible. Cable — 100 times better for the same money. Hello????
Rob
September 22nd, 2012
11:35 pm
Comcast is solid. Had AT&T at my business and home before changing. Tech support at ATT is a nightmare. I’ve had no reason to call Comcast.