T-Mobile says all services restored

November 4th, 2009, 6:21 am · 26 Comments · posted by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress

UPDATE: T-Mobile says if you continue to experience difficulty making/receiving calls or accessing data services, please power your phone off then back on. This will update your connection to the network and should restore your access to these services.

UDPATE: 7:19 a.m.: I’m still hearing that service is spotty in south Orange County. Anyone out there feeling that too? Please leave a comment and I’ll check it out.

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It was a rough night for many T-Mobile customers Tuesday as the mobile-service provider acknowledged that there was a widespread outage of its data and voice services affecting at least 5 percent of its 33.5 million customers. That’s approximately 1.7 million customers.

Around 10:30 last night, the company said everything was fixed. In a statement, T-Mobile said that service was fully restored and the company is now investigating what happened. Here’s the statement:

“T-Mobile confirms it has fully restored voice and text/picture messaging services for customers affected by intermittent service disruptions on Tuesday. About five percent of our customers across various geographies were affected for much of Tuesday evening, and by late Tuesday PST their service was restored. Our sole focus has been restoring full services for all customers; we are now investigating the root cause of the incident. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused our customers.”

The five-hour outage affected not just Orange County, but the whole nation. Readers from Arizona, Minnesota, Dallas, Chicago and other cities left comments saying that their T-Mobile service was out, too.

Other news sites reported that the outage happened just as T-Mobile was trying to fix a data outage that some SideKick users have experienced for nearly one month. T-Mobile said it had restored all services by Halloween.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “Microsoft Corp. accidentally lost personal SideKick data stored in its servers. The company and its SideKick unit, Danger, later restored some of the data, but took a lot of public criticism for the slip-up.”

Are you still experiencing an outage or spotty data/voice service? Comment below and I’ll look into it.

Earlier: T-Mobile says phone service not working

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LEXUSRY says:

November 4, 2009 at 7:03 am

THAT IS NOTHING NEW. I COULD NOT MAKE A PHONE CALL FOR YEARS AT MY HOUSE. I HAVE TO TRAVEL TO A DIFFERENT LOCATION TO MAKE A CALL. I NO LONGER HAVE THEIR SERVICE

Post Reply

No service says:

November 4, 2009 at 7:38 am

I live in San Clemente and just changed to Verizon , coverage is way better.

babyrn58 says:

November 4, 2009 at 7:50 am

Truer words could never have been said LEXUSRY! My son trying to prove his independence went to T-Mobile because that is who all his friends used because it was cheap….well now we know the reason why. Spotty service, accounting practices that even an accounting person could not figure out, and crappy phones. We paid the cancellation fee and he is now back with Verizon.

ThisIsNotAnExit says:

November 4, 2009 at 7:58 am

This is not true! Their voice automated system is still messed up. Even hitting 0 for an operator is messed up.

JULIE says:

November 4, 2009 at 8:03 am

SO THEY SAY IT IS. I’VE HAD MAJOR PROBLEMS WITH MY TEXT MESSAGES (AND I’M SURE OTHER FEATURES THAT I’M NOT AWARE OF) FOR OVER A WEEK. WE SHALL SEE. IT IS HORRIBLE THAT WE RELY ON OUR CELL PHONES FOR EVERYTHING AND WE GET NOTHING. MAYBE SWITCHING PROVIDERS IS THE ANSWER?

danni says:

November 4, 2009 at 8:06 am

This happens to me every three months, so it’s not a new problem… I should have switched to AT&T when I had the chance!

David Whiting says:

We live in South County and I we have been getting “searching” and no service in most areas south of the 55 freeway for three weeks. Anyone else having problems like that?

Scarlett says:

November 4, 2009 at 9:15 am

I despise Tmobile! if i wasnt unedr contract for the next year i’d ditch em! i lost all my data on my sidekick and have not gotten it back! i have constant service interruptions…it’s annoying

Post Reply

hunterr83 says:

November 4, 2009 at 8:34 am

Haha, I’m still bitter about the fact that, being a GSM-based provider, they limit my conference call usage to connect a maximum of 2 other callers to my line. The max used to be like 4 of 6 (not sure since i never went over 3, but only read through forums). Why did they limit this number to begin with. I don’t see how keeping the max at 4 or 6 would affect them, but now I can’t take incoming calls or make outgoing calls when I have 2 other people on the line with me. Soooooo lame. I’m waiting for them to improve their service or have some other company come in and provide the services I need.

OcSingleMom says:

November 4, 2009 at 9:02 am

I’ve been with TMobile for over 7 years. I have had issues with them, but nothing that makes me want to leave- and my twin works for Sprint!

There are a couple of spots I know coverage just isn’t great- for some reason Target and Trader Joes are places I know I can’t rely on and my garage and living room are a bit spotty. It’s not life changing for me, though.

People who expect perfection are hard to please.

I had no idea I didn’t have any coverage last night- but then I don’t make too many phone calls after a certain hour of the day. It didn’t effect me either way.

topspeedmr2 says:

November 4, 2009 at 9:14 am

heh. i have the tmobile sidekick and experienced losing my data. they restored most of my phone book. which i’m somewhat grateful for. but, now this. my contract ends in dec. i’m thinkin about switching providers at this point…

dirk says:

November 4, 2009 at 9:21 am

I’ve had t-mobile for about 3 years now. Not a single problem until yesterday.

itsme says:

November 4, 2009 at 9:22 am

T-Mobile is NOPT a good cellphone provider. I originally got them for my kids. My sons sidekick was effected by last months OOPS and my daughters yesterday. My daughter walks home from school everyday and we talk on the phone while she walks home. I never heard from her and I kept texting her and calling her and I wasn’t getting a response back. Her friends she was with also have T-Mobile and unfortunately, they were all having the same problem. What a scary day it was for me yesterday. She got home ok and called me from there. I have sprint and have had them for 10 years and I NEVER had any problems with them.

November 4, 2009 at 9:25 am

Sorry, its suppose to say NOT, not NOPT

Mark says:

November 4, 2009 at 9:35 am

I dont’ know what you people are smoking, but T-Mobile has had great customer service and worked fine for me everywhere except for a few remote towns, and I’ve had Sprint and AT&T before. And 1 outage in 10 years is not bad.

nickles99 says:

November 4, 2009 at 10:16 am

So what happens to all the text/voice messages that were sent to/from T-Mobile customers? Are they all lost or will they start showing up?

Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress says:

November 4, 2009 at 10:21 am

Good question. T-Mobile is pretty silent at the moment. No response to my question this morning about continued reports of outages. However, I have heard that some users affected by the T-Mobile SideKick data screwup started seeing 3-week old messages pop up.

Post Reply
- nickles99 says:
  
  November 4, 2009 at 10:43 am
  
  The friends I was texting yesterday don’t have Sidekicks…makes you wonder where all the stray texts wind up though!
  
  Post Reply

karl says:

November 4, 2009 at 10:58 am

unacceptable

tylersmamaJ says:

November 4, 2009 at 11:15 am

After being with Sprint (THE WORST at CUST SERVICE AND BILLING!!!) and AT&T (Not bad, but spotty in South OC for coverage), T Mobile has been the most user friendly (website and stores) and everyone I have ever spoken to in customer service has been engaging and helpful. If you depend on a phone to get messages, etc. get a landline. Cell phones in general are only as reliable as the cell towers and networks they operate off of. My family loves T mobile and we’re here to stay!

Peggy says:

November 4, 2009 at 12:02 pm

What happened Tuesday did not happen to me however, for the past two weeks periodically I get a “Radio Path Unavailable” message when trying to call out. I also do not receive calls or text messages when that is on. It happened all day this past Sunday. If this happens again, I am switching providers, I pay for a service that I am not getting.

zeke says:

November 4, 2009 at 12:11 pm

my texting was out, but no biggie. thats why we shouldn’t depend on modern devices, stuff like this is bound to happen, regardless of the company you have. I am still satisfied with Tmobile and wouldn’t switch for anything.

Misty says:

November 4, 2009 at 12:31 pm

For those of us that depend on our phone to do our job, having something like this happen (mid day work week no less) is just unacceptable. I pay good money to these people every month, not to mention how much I paid for the phone, so I do believe this is a huge deal. I have been a long time customer at TMobile and they have had more mishaps this year then I have seen in the entire time I have been with them. I am considering making a change even though I just upgraded my phone. Anything like this ever happens again and I will be forced too. I was feeling the effects from their screw up until 10am this morning. Not cool.

Irving says:

November 4, 2009 at 2:54 pm

I’ve had T-Mobile for years and yesterday was the first of any significant problems

Kelly says:

November 4, 2009 at 4:57 pm

I’ve been a loyal T-Mobile customer for over 5 years and never once had a problem. I would NEVER leave. Spotty service once in a while, but that happens with all providers.

Detroit4Life says:

November 5, 2009 at 7:02 am

i switched from verizon to t-mobile on the request of my daughter. although i saved a little money, the service sucks! my daughter is begging me to go back to verizon or switch to at&t. on my way…


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