Overview

The 2024 United States Cellular Phone Service Outage, also known as the 2024 U.S. Phone Network Outage, refers to the February 22nd, 2024, incident in which major United States phone data carriers (including AT&T and Verizon) experienced several widespread outages, causing loss of service to millions in America without warning. The event, disconnecting people from each other amid the service disruption, led to an outpouring of memes and discussion on social media, including company vs. company memes depending on which service was working while the others were down.

Background

Early in the morning on February 22nd, 2024, it was reported that several phone carriers, most notably AT&T, were experiencing mass losses in coverage for unknown reasons. That day, journalist @MarioNewfal^[1] posted on X / Twitter about the phone carrier outage reportedly affecting the public's ability to dial 911, with a possible cause allegedly being a cyber attack (shown below).

Online Reactions

Reactions from the public were quick to appear with people using WiFi provided by companies not affected by the outage to post about their experience on social media. The narrative of it being a possible cyber attack was reinforced by many reacting to the event.

For example, on February 22nd, 2024, X user @Huberton^[2] posted a video taken from the website Down Detector showing several services were no longer operational, including Fortnite and for a moment League of Legends (shown below).

With a large number of AT&T phones being stuck in "SOS" mode, users online reported that Verizon had come back up later in the evening, prompting memes to be made about Verizon users being superior to other phone companies.

On February 22nd, X user @DArmstrong44^[3] posted a reaction video of rapper and music producer Rick Ross laughing, captioning it as Verizon users looking at the AT&T outage (shown below).

Search Interest

External References