A sweeping AT&T outage led customers across the US to wake up without cellphone service

• AT&T experienced a cell service outage in the US that lasted much of the day.
• The reason for the outage isn't clear, but AT&T said all networks were restored by about 3 p.m. E.T.

Many AT&T users woke up on Thursday morning without cell service.

Their phone showed zero bars of service or displayed that it was in SOS Mode.

That's because the network experienced a widespread outage across the US, AT&T confirmed to Business Insider. The issue impacted tens of thousands of people, according to outage reports.

Reports of service issues spiked on the outage-reporting website DownDetector starting around 3:30 a.m. ET and peaking at 9:00 a.m. with close to 74,000 reports for AT&T.

As of 11 a.m. ET, three-quarters of the network had been restored, according to a spokesperson at AT&T. By 3 p.m. ET, AT&T said that all networks were restored and that the company is taking steps to ensure customers don't experience a cellular outage again.

The outage appears to also have led to issues with customers with other cell providers being unable to reach people with AT&T. Outage reports for Verizon around 8 a.m. ET reached 4,336 and T-Mobile saw just over 2,000, but a spokesperson at Verizon, Lauren Schulz, said there were no issues with Verizon's service itself.

"Verizon's network is operating normally," Schulz said. "Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier. We are continuing to monitor the situation."

T-Mobile shared a similar statement with BI and said a rise in outage reports likely reflects challenges customers were having to connect to users on other networks.

Frustrated AT&T customers took to social media to complain to the company — or share memes about the outage.

The company's account on X, formerly Twitter, replied to customers on Thursday morning requesting to move the conversation to DM.

Some government services were also been impacted by the outage. Emergency service departments around the country, like in San Francisco, warned residents about the outage and advised that they use a landline.

New York Police Department officials told CNN that they were unable to make calls or emails on AT&T phones unless they were connected to Wi-Fi.

An NYPD spokesperson told BI that the cellular outage did not affect their 911 or 311 capabilities.