SoCal quake putting the hurt on AT&T and Verizon?
by Chris Ziegler 
posted Jul 29th 2008 at 3:44PM
We're hearing some reports that folks on AT&T and Verizon are having trouble with their cellies -- voice and BlackBerry services, respectively -- in the wake of this morning's magnitude 5.4 tremblor out in southern California. What's the story, Los Angelinos? Still able to make and receive calls?[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Al @ Jul 29th 2008 3:51PM
Local news say it could be partly due to all the call made that is why some can make calls to other. At least that what it seems like to me. The whole family is on VZW and my dad can call me but i can't call my mom, yet at the same time I can call my friend on VZW in north orange county.
Eric @ Jul 29th 2008 3:54PM
Definite trouble making calls to other in network people on Verizon.
Virtually impossible to get through immediately following the quake.
Now I can get a call through but not necessarily on the first try.
Erico @ Jul 29th 2008 3:53PM
I'm with T-Mo and I couldn't make a call.
Elisha Adeagbo @ Jul 29th 2008 3:57PM
me too
bryan.stuie @ Jul 29th 2008 3:57PM
Service went down within a minute of the quake hitting. I was on the road when my iPhone stopped getting service in La Palma. I drovevto Fullerton a few miles down to an At&t store, and all their phones had no service either. I received sporadic text messages from mom & friend tyT their At&t service is also interrupted in Mission Viejo, and in Paasdena. That's a large area affected if service is interrupted in all those cities.
capricor82 @ Jul 29th 2008 3:57PM
I'm on sprint and can't make calls or send text messages, but I still have my power vision working. my mom has a blackberry and can still get her email but no phone calls
Rob @ Jul 29th 2008 3:59PM
Interestingly enough, my mother, who is up in Canada right now, has been unable to receive calls. I attempted to call her from here in Southern California, only to get a busy signal for the past hour or so.
Rob @ Jul 29th 2008 4:04PM
Being the goof I am, I forgot to mention that the landline is ATT, and my mother's on a Verizon Wireless cell; Motorola Q, I believe.
sucram @ Jul 29th 2008 4:08PM
definitely have had no service for calls or text for about an hour in orange county on big red
Erick @ Jul 29th 2008 4:08PM
In West L.A. - first 5+ earthquake and it sucked. T-Mobile's network is up but very slow. I would assume that emergency provision are in effect and the airwaves were limited to emergency use for a short time period.
What a crazy day!
kastonie @ Jul 29th 2008 7:25PM
isnt t mobile generally slow all the time, since they do not have any 3g out in LA?
morganfreeman @ Jul 29th 2008 4:12PM
i know this sounds stupid but this is the site i go to first everyday so i REALLY appreciate this being on the site. this way, i can check on the fam. so thanks and take care out there.
Andy @ Jul 29th 2008 4:11PM
T-mobile was down for only about 5 minutes for me, but it was overloaded circuits, my dad's Sprint phone was down for about 45 minutes.
burton1976 @ Jul 29th 2008 4:13PM
My iPhone lost all ability to make calls or send text messages, in fact, as the shaking was going on I was trying to call my fiancee and couldn't get through...immediately got "call failed" for about 45 minutes after the shaking stopped. My landline was up and running just fine.
Erick @ Jul 29th 2008 4:14PM
Work in a Tower Industry related - learned two things...
1 - Yes they would reserved bandwidth for emergency professionals - no matter the network.
2 - All the carriers are still having trouble with networks here in WLA. I'm sitting with a VZW, T-Mo, AT&T and Sprint customer and we all needed three attempts to send out bound text messages. Calls are completed but on GSM technology the calls drop.
That's all I got - have a shakey day.
ballerv8 @ Jul 29th 2008 4:28PM
My mom works in downtown LA and she was able to call home then call my cellphone.
I was able to call my mom and home also.
We have Verizon.
LC @ Jul 29th 2008 4:55PM
I have Sprint network & everything is down pretty much...texts & calls hard to complete.
Karnblack @ Jul 29th 2008 4:35PM
I was on my cell during the quake. I'm in Anaheim, CA and on AT&T. I was also able to make a few calls afterward. Didn't have any problems whatsoever.
Steve @ Jul 29th 2008 4:58PM
ATT Service was about down for an hour saying No Service on the phone. Service came back, but no calls were able to be made. EDGE data down. 1:50 some calls are able to be made. It seems the network is still having trouble connecting, probably due to high call volume. Edge does not seem to be working, however, 3g service seems to be ok. I get a flood of texts whenever my phone switches over to 3g signal. Just thinking of the funny situation for those folks who got their iphone 3g's today and weren't able to use it on network because of the quake.... what's your answer to that Jobs?
alex! @ Jul 29th 2008 4:52PM
I was in South Orange County, near Anaheim, and right after the earthquake I made several calls and had no problems on AT&T. There were reports out of Chino Hills, the epicenter of the earthquake, that there was major congestion on ALL carriers, from AT&T to T-Mobile, wireless and landlines. I also heard that the best way to get into contact with family and friends during an emergency is through text messages, as they do not congest phone lines.
LC @ Jul 29th 2008 4:55PM
Update....Sprint's network was only having problems cause EVERYBODY in LA was tryna call each other to hear if everyone was ok, same as texting. No tower outages...."like Sprint even owns them anymore" lol
Michael S @ Jul 29th 2008 5:02PM
I'm really not sure what owning the towers has to do with this. Most carriers don't own all the towers they have their antennas on.
Kyle Honma @ Jul 29th 2008 4:57PM
I'm in Carson(south bay area) and I couldn't call from both my AT&T landline and cell phone. Every time I would call out I would get the busy signal 10 seconds into the phone call and my cell phone would automatically say busy signal or call failed.
mike @ Jul 29th 2008 7:34PM
on VZW just started getting txt a couple of hours old
Jerome @ Jul 29th 2008 5:29PM
After an earthquake all the cellular networks are only used by emergency services. That's why it was impossible to make or receive phone calls.
nickvanxl @ Jul 29th 2008 5:03PM
Live in Villa Park. It was impossible to reach anyone on Verizon directly after the earthquake. Even an hour later I had troubles getting calls through. It is ridiculous. Shouldn't a cell phone be for emergencies?!?
Tejas @ Jul 29th 2008 5:06PM
LOL... does San Diego count?!?! ;-)
No problems here with AT&T. In fact... we were on a conference call when this happened... the other party was in Los Angeles and they felt the quake 2 seconds before us. The phone line stayed on... and we didn't have any problems...
Didn't have any problems making calls after that too...
eimajuno @ Jul 29th 2008 5:12PM
I'm in Diamond Bar about 5 miles from Chino Hills. I was able to receive calls immediately after but the first call that I tried to dial out failed. I redialed immediately and everything seems to be fine.
TurboFool @ Jul 29th 2008 5:13PM
I lost text first on Sprint, then voice, then voice came back within-network only, and then eventually it all came back up. Data remained functional the entire time, though, interestingly enough. I was in Beverly Hills at the time.
Dan @ Jul 29th 2008 9:53PM
I wasnt able to make a call or receive it right after the quake, but now it seems to be working fine, I have ATT.
Pete @ Jul 29th 2008 5:59PM
I made a call to an AT&T customer about 2 hours after the earthquake and received a busy signal. Next call went through fine. I'm on Verizon. Made several calls to Nextel customers and they went through fine (not even a "please wait while we locate the Nextel subscriber you are calling" message). Text messages to/from T-mobile went through fine about 10 mins after the quake. Didn't make any phone calls directly after the earthquake, so don't know what networks were like then.
Yaser @ Jul 29th 2008 6:13PM
I'm in Pomona, CA 5 miles aways the epicenter...tried calling right after the quake and some calls went through but some didnt. (T-mobile) after 5 minutes everything was fine, but tried calling people with ATT and Sprint and the call couldnt go through..
youngcalihottie @ Jul 30th 2008 12:41AM
im in pomona right now. like 5 miles away. i have had no trouble at all with at&t. everything has been fine the whole time. my friends mom has verizon and she still cant get a call through. the house phone still doesnt work either. i dont know why att and vz are targeted with this post. it affects all carriers and landlines too. im sure it just has to do with reserved bandwidth and everyone in the world calling socal to see if everyone is ok. which is unnecessary because there have been no major injuries reported. this place is built for earthquakes. buildings are on freakin rollers. we're fine. so stop making all our circuits busy. ...this time at least
youngcalihottie @ Jul 30th 2008 12:43AM
(posted 6 hours ago. i approve my comments thru email. dont ask me why cuz idk lol)
NuShrike @ Jul 29th 2008 6:21PM
You know, if 9/11 taught some of us anything, it's that DON'T make voice calls immediately after an event because that's what EVERYBODY is doing and these networks are never built for sustained capacity use -- especially wireless. It's great if you really want to plug up the networks for the emergency workers, however.
Text, or wait a bit.
Derek @ Jul 29th 2008 6:49PM
I could make calls on my ATT iPhone 1 hour after the event. Internet got knocked out in Hollywood for some time though.
Zogg @ Jul 29th 2008 6:58PM
AT&T wasn't down in The Valley, however there were minor service outages citywide on most carriers for a period ranging 1-50 minutes.
Jerry @ Jul 30th 2008 5:24PM
in the downtown la area i was affected... but only for 2 hours... afterwards i was able to make and receive calls
Nnnite @ Jul 29th 2008 9:09PM
i have tmo. And circuits were busy. For the first five min. But verizon landline still having issuses. My Tmo @home always worked
Matt D @ Jul 29th 2008 8:39PM
It still really scetchy here, but i live in Chino Hills area so luckly we're all ok. Our whole house is messed up with glass and even a broken closet and a desk toppled over. Landlines are acting weird where it's ringing but un able to pick up and my cell service goes from 5 bars 3g to 1 bar on ol' g. Luckly our power is working too, unlike my unfortunate friends
elgee02 @ Jul 29th 2008 9:59PM
In the high desert about 60 miles away from the epicenter I still felt the quake pretty good. Calls on my VZW phone when through just fine (we use the LA switches up here in the high desert) but activating some of my customers phones via *228 would not go through for the first 15-20 mins after the quake.
michael Lee @ Jul 29th 2008 11:11PM
i lost service on at&t for about 20 minutes in marina del rey. my business partner lost service on sprint for about the same amount of time; however we were able to use the land line immediately. another reason to keep your land lines folks!
wanderson9 @ Jul 29th 2008 11:52PM
AT&T at Disneyland worked all the way through the earthquake and after. What good is a cell phone if it doesn't work in an emergency.
SoulinEther @ Jul 30th 2008 1:14AM
At Cal State Fullerton with ATT, all of 1 minute after the quake I could neither text nor call. Got a little bit better about half an hour afterward, but even over an hour after text and voice were still spotty.
I figured it was something to do with emergency services.... And i guess i was right :D
Scott @ Jul 30th 2008 2:44AM
tmobile was down the entire hour following in torrance
I called them & they said they'd look into it... we're about 30-40 miles from the epicenter
kwsmithphoto @ Jul 30th 2008 1:22PM
At the beach on a Blackberry Verizon. Placed a call during the tail end of the shaking to another VZW phone and after a long pause it went straight to voicemail.
Next call was to my fiancee who just left the house, also on VZW, got through on the second try.
Landline/DSL didn't skip a beat and yes, the main reason I use a (Verizon) landline is for emergencies.
Cell phone service returned to normal within 15-30 minutes. I had no voicemail from missed calls, and nobody who called me said they had any trouble.
Also, BIS was fully functional since I got several emails and BB messenger texts within minutes of the event.
I read somewhere that Verizon was 40% over their "worst case" expected load for disasters here. This wasn't even a minor disaster just a lot of rock and roll. They obviously need to fix that but overall I was pretty impressed.
BTW, I understand the need for keeping lines clear for people using phones to contact emergency services, but if the emergency services are using cell phones to talk to each other, that's really irresponsible of them - that's what radio is for. They shouldn't rely on a telcomm infrastructure in situations like this.
Eddy @ Jul 30th 2008 5:20AM
After the quake happened, I immediately tried calling my brother and sister, who have T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile, respectively. I have Boost/Nextel and I was also unable to get through to them for about 15 minutes. Whenever I called my brother, it said the network was busy or unavailable, and when I'd call my sister it sort of worked, but it was just silent, no ringing. I then called my house, I have Verizon for my home phone and the call went through perfectly. I was able to make and receive calls from my home phone as well.
After the calls, I remembered that I read or heard somewhere that text messaging is the best way to contact people in an emergency. I'm not sure if this is true, but I remember hearing that even if the text messaging also becomes congested, the networks que your texts, and send them out as soon as possible.
Again, I don't know if that's true, since my brother wasn't able to send texts for about an hour or two. I however was receiving and sending texts from friends with different carriers and they worked just fine.
Aric Reid @ Jul 30th 2008 11:03PM
I work in Ventura county. Tried calling my wife immediately following the quake, and she tried to call me. We were able to converse by instant messaging via computer, bu the cell towers definately glitched. Interestingly, a friend was talking on his phone during the quake and suffered no interuption. As soon as he hung up, and tried to call work to check in (am military so have to be accounted for), he recieved "Call failed."
What we figured is circuits either became overloaded, OR there is a system in place to clamp down on traffic immediately following the emergency, but allows current calls to continue until terminated. I could see this being used for emergency services(police, ambulences, etc.)