Powerful solar flares dismissed as culprit in nationwide AT&T outage

As tens of thousands of customers lost wireless cellular service Thursday, theories about what caused the outage multiplied on social media.

One theory quickly gained traction, however, with many pinning the disruptions on two powerful solar flares that erupted Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Could the flares, each a million times more powerful than a volcanic eruption, be responsible?

Not likely, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday.

Solar flares can indeed disrupt communication systems, electrical power grids and navigation signals. But “based on the intensity of the eruption and associated phenomena, it is highly unlikely that these flares contributed to the widely reported cellular network outages,” the agency said in a statement.

NASA describes solar flares as “powerful bursts of energy.”

In this case, the sun emitted the first X-solar flare at 5:07 p.m. CT and the second at 12:32 a.m. Thursday. X-solar flares are the most powerful type of flare.

Ravi Prakash, a computer science professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, told the Dallas Morning News that it’s unlikely the outages were caused by solar flares for a simple reason.

“That would affect everybody, not just one or two providers,” said Prakash, who studies wireless networking.

The NOAA and Space Weather Prediction Center said in the statement they will continue to monitor any impact to critical infrastructure and essential services.

Speculation extended beyond solar flares on social media, where the hashtag #CyberAttack was trending Thursday morning.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said it was monitoring the disruption but did not say whether there is any indication of a cyberattack.

“CISA is aware of the reports and we are working closely with AT&T to understand the cause of the outage and its impacts, and stand ready to offer any assistance needed,” Eric Goldstein, the agency’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity, said in an emailed statement.

Wireless service was restored by mid-afternoon Thursday, roughly 12 hours after the first reports of outages.

“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 Dallas-based company said in a statement.

Based on an initial review, the company said in a statement Thursday night the outage was caused by the “application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack.”