(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Several large service carriers including AT&T (http://www.att.com) and Level 3 (http://www.level3.com) experienced service disruption Sunday, affecting both mobile and Internet users in the Midwest and other areas of the United States, according to Data Center Knowledge.
According to reports by the Chicago Sun-Times, a power failure at a Bloomfield, Michigan switching center caused by a powerful windstorm, is to be blamed for the service disruptions.
The incident marks the latest in a series of network carrier failures. Undersea cables in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia reportedly suffered another break during the repair of three undersea cables in other locations.
AT&T spokeswoman Meghan Roskopf told the Chicago Sun-Times via email that at 5 p.m. Sunday, “a substantial portion of the impacted equipment was back in service,” and by 9 p.m., “virtually all service traffic” was back to normal.
Meanwhile, AT&T users in the Chicago area reported that the service interruptions were “scattered,” ranging from having “sporadic” service to having no service at all.
The inconsistent nature of the interruptions made it significantly difficult for AT&T to determine the severity of the situation and the process customers know what was going on, said Roskopf.
Level3, a major Internet backbone, also experienced significant service interuptions, as reported by TechCrunch.
Eunice Morales, Level3 technical support technician told TechCrunch that the service disruptions had been resolved by 2:45 p.m. Sunday.
She also said that the issues stemmed from various locations, including Washington, DC, Chicago, Spain, and Germany, while speculating that the problems could possibly be related to the AT&T outage.
