Much of the Southeast Spent 5 Hours without Internet

Guarding against Internet downtime is hard, and sometimes major outages can occur in vast territories over the U.S. These outages, like this Southeast Internet outage, can happen across carriers and take hours to fix.

Last week users took to social media to decry a major network outage that affected Internet and Cellphone access for a huge swath of the Southeast United States, according to USA Today. The article details reports of Internet outages that began on 3pm Tuesday, August 4, 2015 and lasted for approximately 5 hours.

According to MetroSafe, based in Louisville, KY, emergency procedures ensured police departments remained safely on and available. Metropolitan areas across Tennessee, Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky all experienced outages, but there do not appear to be any reports of emergency issues exacerbated by the lack of connectivity.

Separately, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported that the carriers affected including AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular reported a variety of excuses for the outage. Verizon and US Cellular blamed a “third-party vendor” and T-Mobile cited a “server issue” in a tweet. Sprint reportedly blamed the issues on a “local exchange carrier.”

Re/code, the independent tech news website, attributes the failure to AT&T. According to Re/code, AT&T’s network provides the backhaul for all major carriers in the region. In other words, after data has been collected by a cell tower by any carrier, that data moves over AT&T’s landline network.

The networks that provide Internet and cellphone service are enormous in their size and scope.

Outages are something we will always have to live with. The networks that provide Internet and cellphone service are enormous in their size and scope. Wires can be cut or damaged by environmental factors from natural events or from animals. Humans can often unintentionally destroy network infrastructure during construction and other activities. Power can fail and knock out access for many individuals. Chattanooga News reported a spokesman for Kentucky's Emergency Management Division acknowledged an AT&T cable had been cut, though the reason why is not yet known.

As more and more things in our lives connect to the Internet, downtime moves from an inconvenience to a major burden. When machines and sensors need to communicate with the Internet to perform optimally, efficiency is lost with every outage. Extended outages like this Southeast Internet outage can cause productivity to grind to a halt. As the Internet of Things revolution expands and more devices and sensors flood every industry, ensuring Internet networks do not go down increases in its importance.

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