AT&T service restored after customers hit by widespread cellular outages in the U.S.

AT&T’s widespread outage that left thousands without service for hours Thursday was likely caused by a process error — not a cyberattack, the carrier said.

The trouble started early Thursday, but by afternoon AT&T reported that service had been restored to all customers.

Over 32,000 AT&T outages were reported by customers about 4 a.m. ET Thursday. Reports dipped then spiked again to more than 50,000 around 7 a.m., with most issues reported in Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Atlanta, according to the site.

That number surged to more than 71,000 just before 8 a.m. ET.

AT&T acknowledged the issue Thursday morning, saying: “Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning.”

Other cellular providers, including Verizon, T-Mobile and Cricket Wireless, also reported outages. Verizon and T-Mobile said those affected had been trying to contact AT&T users.

Verizon said Thursday morning that the outages are not affecting its network directly, only customers trying to reach another carrier.

T-Mobile also said early Thursday that the network didn’t suffer an outage.

More than 13,500 customers reported outages as of 8 a.m. ET Thursday. The number dipped to around 10,000 by 10 a.m.

“Allow us to explain that there is a nationwide network incident impacting multiple services,” the company wrote on X. “It is Cricket’s top priority to restore service to full capacity as quickly and safely as possible.”

“We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them. Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority. And we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future,” the company said in a statement.

Tens of thousands of Americans had trouble making phone calls, sending texts, reaching emergency services. Or even accessing the internet on Thursday because of a nearly 12-hour AT&T network outage.

The alarm over an outage of a major cell network that at one point affected more than 70,000 customers is understandable.

People have become deeply reliant on their cell phones for keeping in touch with work and family, getting directions.  Accessing the internet and doing two-factor authentication for website logins — not to mention more serious tasks like calling for help when in danger.

The incident also quickly raised questions about whether malicious activity could have caused the outage and could present an ongoing threat to US cell networks. Although there is currently no evidence that bad actors were behind the outage.

AT&T finally restored wireless service to all customers by around 3 pm ET, and the company said it was “sincerely” sorry to customers.

Here’s what you need to know about the outage:

But starting early Thursday morning, thousands of AT&T customers began reporting issues calling, texting and accessing the internet on their mobile devices. At one point, more than 74,000 AT&T customers reported outages on digital-service tracking site DownDetector. The figure only represents self-reported outages, meaning the true number of affected customers was almost certainly higher.