T-Mobile recovers from service disruptions in the Northeast

T-Mobile US (NYSE:TMUS) experienced a service disruption for several hours on Friday across a wide swath of the Northeast before restoring service in the early evening.

According to measurements taken of service outage or disruption reports on Friday on the website DownDetector, there were reports of T-Mobile service outages in Baltimore; Boston; the Bronx; Brooklyn; New York City;  Philadelphia; Providence, R.I.;  Washington D.C., and Jersey City and Somerville, N.J.

According to The Verge, some customers experienced disruptions and loss of high-speed data reception in Boston, New York and Washington. Other customers lost the ability to make voice calls, though intermittent service and loss of data were more common complaints.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere took to Twitter to note that the company was aware of the service disruptions. "Thanks for making sure we're aware of some network issues in the NE," he posted at around 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday. "The network team is on it. I'll let u know when fully restored."

By around 6:15 p.m. Legere posted that "We are fully restored! Thanks for being patient, everyone."

It's unclear what caused the service disruption, especially over such a widespread and heavily populated area. A T-Mobile spokesman declined to comment on the cause of the outages.

The outage proves that no carrier is immune to service disruptions. Other carriers including Verizon and AT&T have suffered outages in the past. T-Mobile has boasted about its network speeds and has marketed its LTE network is "data strong." The company currently covers 265 million POPs with LTE, and plans to expand that to 280 million POPs by mid-year and 300 million by the end of the year. The carrier is going to be refarming its 1900 MHz PCS spectrum for LTE and also deploying its 700 MHz A Block spectrum for LTE service to expand coverage.

Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T Mobility (NYSE: T) both cover more than 300 million POPs with their LTE networks; Sprint (NYSE: S) now covers 270 million POPs.

For more:
- see this The Verge article
- see this TMoNews article

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