As of Thursday afternoon, the AT&T outage that impacted users’ ability to call 9-1-1 in Santa Barbara has been resolved, according to the Santa Barbara Police Department.
The wireless disruption began early Tuesday, temporarily preventing some AT&T customers from reaching emergency services and prompting officials to issue alternate instructions for contacting help.
Shortly after 7:30 a.m. on January 6, police issued a Nixle alert warning that the outage “may impact the ability to call 911 from AT&T devices.” Residents were advised to use landlines, text 9-1-1, or call from devices using other carriers.
AT&T later said the issue was caused by physical damage to fiber-optic cables belonging to another telecommunications provider. “Some wireless customers in the Santa Barbara area may have trouble dialing 9-1-1 from their cellular phones due to a fiber cut on another carrier’s network,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon.
The company has not responded to follow-up questions regarding which provider’s infrastructure was damaged, how the damage occurred, or how widespread the outage was.
Service for other cellular providers was not affected during the incident.
