Deadly weather damages T-Mobile’s network in the US

Deadly weather damages T-Mobile’s network in the US

Severe weather resulted in lapses in large parts of T-Mobile’s US network, with record snowfalls, storms, and cold waves recorded throughout the States.

T-Mobile experienced multiple problems throughout its network as a result of the severe bout of weather being experienced across the country, especially in Texas which also caused damaged to power plants.

T-Mobile acknowledged the issue through a tweet by Ray Neville, the company’s president of technology, “We’re experiencing network problems following severe weather in several areas of the country and especially across Texas.”

AT&T and Verizon appear to be going through some of the same problems, but their issues don’t seem to be as widespread.

A severe winter storm is causing chaos across many parts of the South and mid-section of the country however Texas faced the worst of it. Over 4.1 million Texans are living without power as record low temperatures caused an energy demand to spike the state’s electric grid was unable to keep up with.

Ways to deal with the problem

The majority (53 percent) of reported problems related to lack of access to mobile data, followed by difficulties making calls (28 percent) and no signal (18 percent) entirely, according to Downdetector.

In addition, the telco gave instructions for customers affected by the weather having network issues:

  • If you have home broadband and power but no mobile service, try Wi-Fi calling, which allows T-Mobile and Sprint customers with capable devices to text, make and receive voice calls via any capable Wi-Fi connection.
  • If your mobile service is working, try to keep calls to a minimum and as short as possible, which help
  • reduce the load on our network so others can get through.
  • Send a text instead of making a call because text messages get through easier during times of congestion.

A spokesperson for Verizon said company has had minor issues due to the cold snap. “Verizon’s network is performing well as winter storms make their way across the country with limited impact to our network operations,” the spokesperson said.

“In the vast majority of locations, we have backup generators running and we are on standby to refuel generators to ensure our network continues to serve our customers.” Some parts of Verizon’s fiber infrastructure is down, but the carrier says it has crews working on bringing those back online.

It’s unclear how long the outages and disruptions are expected to last and how the winter storms may delay repairs.