National cellphone outage causes additional issues in southern Colorado
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO)-- AT&T said Thursday that services have been restored to all customers after thousands reported cell phone outages on February 19. More than 64,000 customers reported issues placing calls, texting, or accessing the internet. According to the tracking site, Down-Detector, some Verizon and T-Mobile customers have also reported disruption. At this time, there's no indication the outage was caused by a cyberattack or other malicious activity.
In southern Colorado, officials said they have not received many phone calls from residents alerting them of cellphone outages, but police in the region said they have noticed an influx of people asking, "What if?" questions and that is causing a new issue. Sergeant Frank Ortega said since this morning's national outage. People have been calling 9-1-1 with non-emergency situations and that's causing a bit of a delay for their department.
Pueblo PD said Thursday morning dispatch phones were ringing with people asking, "What should I do if I can't reach 911?" The national cell phone outage concerned people across the country after several cities reported issues with people being able to make emergency calls.
That didn't happen in southern Colorado, but Pueblo PD said the outage concern caused another issue.
"Because the thing is we have legitimate emergencies that are coming in and while our dispatchers are explaining why you shouldn't do that, we are missing out on potential real-life emergencies to help people in situations," said Sargent, Frank Ortega with the Pueblo Police Department.
Ortega said people should be able to still get in touch with 9-1-1 even when their phone is in 'SOS mode'. However, if for whatever reason you cannot, there are some other options to get in touch with authorities.
"So there are plenty of apps if you have wifi, you have phone service that's another option. I know I personally use WhatsApp and I am able to talk to my friends in Russia and Mexico," added Ortega.
Other police departments like Colorado Springs PD also suggest people get a landline phone to always prevent issues like these, see if you can use a neighbor's phone, or try connecting to wifi for calling. If for whatever reason you cannot get a hold of your police department, people can always email their city's police department with any questions or concerns they may have.
