T-Mobile outage affects customers across U.S.

By George Mathis and Kristi E. Swartz

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

T-Mobile said Wednesday it's fixed the technical problems that caused about 5 percent of its customers in the U.S. to lose phone, text-messaging and Internet service Tuesday night.

Now, the mobile carrier is moving on to find the root cause of the problem, the company said in a statement.

"We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused our customers," the company said in a statement.

T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, is the nation's fourth-largest cell carrier but lags significantly behind the big three of AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel.

A representative of the company reached by phone on Tuesday said there were outages, but technicians are working on a solution. She could not provide more technical detail. Not all customers were affected by the outage.

"We’re making good progress restoring voice and messaging service to affected customers. At this time (9 p.m. Tuesday), approximately 5 percent of T-Mobile customers are experiencing service disruptions. Issues began at approximately 5:30 p.m. Eastern time. Our rapid response team is working continuously to fully resolve this disruption. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused our customers," a T-Mobile spokesperson said in a press release.

T-Mobile also had trouble in early October when Sidekick phone users were unable to connect to the Internet or use their contact list for about two weeks.

Those still experiencing problems should contact T-Mobile. A forum has been set up for those affected by the outage.