FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — According to a Google search data analysis, Arkansas had the most searches per population of the words “AT&T Down,” ”AT&T Outage,” and "network down."
Reports of the AT&T outage began around 3 a.m. and spiked again at 10 a.m. on Feb. 22.
Local school districts and police departments said the outage did not disrupt their daily duties.
But for others, like young freshmen at the University of Arkansas, the cell phone outage felt like the end of the world.
"I woke up for my 8 a.m. [class] at like 7. And I was like, 'Why does my phone say SOS?' And then I thought it was just a me thing. And then everybody in the elevator was talking about it," Avery, a freshman who uses AT&T services, said.
Another freshman, Miles Marlow said, "Usually I wake up to four texts from my mom and didn't have a single one. I was like, something's wrong."
Marlow says his mom thinks the nationwide outage is due to two solar flares that occurred Wednesday night.
But, reports say its highly unlikely a solar flare caused the outage. And, not every cell service seemed to have the same issue.
"I have Verizon and I honestly haven't had much of a problem with it," Will Mason said.
A T-Mobile user, Killian Ward, said, "I didn't even know anything was out. So yeah, it was great."
But, not all AT&T users lost service.
"I felt pretty good about myself. I felt pretty bad for everyone else. But, it was cool. Because I was emailing everyone, like for text, which was like the early 2000s," freshman Braydon Camp, who had to email his long-distance girlfriend who lost her service, said.
Others had to find other ways to pass the time.
"I ended up taking a nap. I napped from 9 to 11, and I woke up and it was back working," freshman Dillon Riepe said.
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