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Cell service out for thousands across the American Southeast

Cellular service appears to be down across every major provider throughout Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky with Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville being the hardest hit. According to the website Down Detector, more than 10,000 AT&T, 1,000 Verizon, 7,000 T-Mobile and 300 Sprint customers are without internet or phone access. None of the affected companies have disclosed the specific reason for the outage yet, though they all have already issued vague statements about how they're working on the issue.

Update: Verizon is reporting the issue is resolved as of 8PM ET, however we haven't seen an update from the others yet.

Verizon issued the following statement after fielding numerous complaints on its Twitter account:

A connectivity issue is causing a service interruption in our market. Our engineers are aware of this issue and are working with our vendor partners to resolve this issue quickly. At present we do not have an estimated time of resolution.

As did T-Mobile:

Sprint followed the same pattern in its statement:

We are aware of the impacts to service in which customers may be unable to access voice and some data services. This appears to be an issue caused by a local exchange provider and our network team is working with the provider to restore service to impacted customers as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience.

As did AT&T:

Some customers across parts of the Southeast are experiencing wireline and wireless service issues. We are investigating the cause and working as quickly as possible to restore service. We apologize for this inconvenience.

According to Re/code, a Sprint rep has hinted that the issue originated at a local exchange provider that works with the affected companies. "We are aware of the impacts to service in which customers across multiple carriers may be unable to access voice and some data services," the rep said. "This appears to be an issue caused by a local exchange provider and our network team is working with the provider to restore service to impacted customers as quickly as possible."

As you can see in the Down Detector screenshots above, the outage is centered in the American Southeast, however there are also smaller interruptions in San Francisco, LA, Dallas and NYC, among others. Stay tuned (assuming you've still got a signal), we'll update as soon as we know when repairs will be completed.

[Image Credit: top - LightRocket via Getty Images, inline - Downdetector.com]

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