[Outages-discussion] [outages] [EXTERNAL] Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: ATT cellular network 2024-02-22

Thu Feb 22 16:16:37 EST 2024

What I'm going to say here is going to make me sound like an ass, but I want you to understand that that's not what I'm doing, and that's not my intention:

This seems more like a reading comprehension problem than anything else. Let's break down the relevant parts of the AP article:

> A number of Americans are dealing with cellular outages on AT&T, Cricket Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile and other service providers, according to data from Downdetector. AT&T, who was the hardest hit, is actively working to restore service to all of its customers.
>
> AT&T had more than 58,000 outages around noon ET, in locations including Houston, Atlanta and Chicago. The outages, which began at approximately 3:30 a.m. ET, peaked at around 73,000 reported incidents. The carrier has more than 240 million subscribers, the country’s largest.

These paragraphs establish & elaborate on the problem, and explicitly identifies the source of data (Downdetector) used in the article.

> “Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. Our network teams took immediate action and so far three-quarters of our network has been restored. We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers,” AT&T and Cricket said in a statement.

This is an objective statement of fact direct from the affected carriers about the situation.

> Cricket Wireless, which is owned by AT&T, had more than 9,000 outages, Downdetector said Thursday.
>
> Verizon had more than 2,000 outages and T-Mobile had more than 1,400 outages. Boost Mobile had about 700 outages.

These paragraphs are not statements of objective fact in context to the outage itself, they are a further elaboration on the data from DownDetector. It's even explicitly outlined and attributed to Downtector with "Downdetector said Thursday." That is not repeated in the next paragraph about Verizon/T-Mobile/Boost outages because it's repetitive and unnecessary due to the attribution in the paragraph immediately preceding it.

> “Verizon’s network is operating normally. Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier. We are continuing to monitor the situation,” Verizon said.
>
> T-Mobile said that it did not experience an outage.
>
> “Our network is operating normally. Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks,” T-Mobile said.

These paragraphs are objective statements direct from other carriers mentioned in this article. Both statements explicitly outline that their networks aren't having issues, and that the "outages" attributed to them likely lie with their customers having issues contacting customers on the affected network (AT&T).

AP would have used Downdetector or a similar service as its data source because Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile/etc do not provide publicly-available maps or data concerning their outages. The only issues that I have with this article are:

1. They should have included a note explaining that Downdetector is entirely self-reported data
2. They should have reached out directly to the carriers for comments and first-party data instead of including only public statements made by those carriers

And #2 might not even be an issue if AP actually did reach but didn't receive a response. That's it, thanks for coming to my TED talk.

-----Original Message-----
From: Outages-discussion <outages-discussion-bounces at outages.org> On Behalf Of Rusty Dekema via Outages-discussion
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2024 3:42 PM
To: Chapman, Brad (NBCUniversal) <Brad.Chapman at nbcuni.com>
Cc: Outages Discussion <outages-discussion at outages.org>
Subject: Re: [Outages-discussion] [outages] [EXTERNAL] Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: ATT cellular network 2024-02-22

I'm not Andy, but I will say this:

You seem to be very offended at Andy's criticism of the mainstream media's lack of understanding of what Downdetector is and is not, and his sentiment that it is lazy for a news organization not to have found this out before relying on it as a source. Be that as it may, I believe that his criticism is entirely correct.

The Associated Press article was factually incorrect when it stated that "Verizon had more than 2,000 outages and T-Mobile had more than
1,400 outages. Boost Mobile had about 700 outages", as Andy explained.

Reuters was somewhat less incorrect in their claim that "Users of Verizon (VZ.N), T-Mobile (TMUS.O), and UScellular (USM.N), also faced disruptions" because they attributed that claim directly to Downdetector, which did publish those reports. It was still an act of poor-quality journalism not to have explained the unreliable nature of Downdetector when using it as a source. At least the article did go on to note that Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular had been contacted and stated that their networks were operating normally.

I understand that it may no longer be the norm, but I do not think it should be unreasonable to expect factual reporting and some basic level of understanding of sources in large mainstream news organizations and their work product.

Sincerely,
Rusty D.

On Thu, Feb 22, 2024 at 3:25 PM Chapman, Brad (NBCUniversal) via Outages-discussion <outages-discussion at outages.org> wrote:
>
> Andy,
>
> Respectfully, no amount of “garbage” reporting is worth that kind of flaming and vitriol.
>
> Or, if you prefer, I can forward your comments to someone in our News department, since I work for one of those organizations.  I’m sure they’d love to hear your insightful feedback on their research skills.
>
> Do I have your permission to share the email unedited?
>
> -Brad
>
>
> > On Feb 22, 2024, at 12:11 PM, Andy Ringsmuth via Outages-discussion <outages-discussion at outages.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >> On Feb 22, 2024, at 1:41 PM, Christopher Conley via Outages <outages at outages.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> There have been numerous articles on it, including by AP & Reuters:
> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://apnews.com/article/cellular-att
> >> -verizon-tmobile-outage-02d8dfd93019e79e5e2edbeed08ee450__;!!PIZeeW
> >> 5wscynRQ!p1ahQFSwDiuas79nPV3ZYaWPjS76vEGU0wRxGX8UsZDT-u2Ah0ihceAZOr
> >> VTxOgUk6bkhuqP3jehcW4XiquMRswC2yUcj0Q$
> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.reuters.com/technology/cell
> >> ular-outage-us-hits-att-t-mobile-verizon-users-downdetector-shows-2
> >> 024-02-22/__;!!PIZeeW5wscynRQ!p1ahQFSwDiuas79nPV3ZYaWPjS76vEGU0wRxG
> >> X8UsZDT-u2Ah0ihceAZOrVTxOgUk6bkhuqP3jehcW4XiquMRswCiEKouZs$
> >>  If you don’t trust newswire agencies like AP/Reuters, then you have a different problem entirely.
> >> And here it is directly from the horse’s mouth:
> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://about.att.com/pages/network-upd
> >> ate__;!!PIZeeW5wscynRQ!p1ahQFSwDiuas79nPV3ZYaWPjS76vEGU0wRxGX8UsZDT
> >> -u2Ah0ihceAZOrVTxOgUk6bkhuqP3jehcW4XiquMRswC3TzLv0Y$
> >
> > FTA above:
> >
> > "A number of Americans are dealing with cellular outages on AT&T, Cricket Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile and other service providers, according to data from Downdetector. AT&T, who was the hardest hit, is actively working to restore service to all of its customers.”
> >
> > So no, of course I don’t trust AP or Reuters or anyone else when it comes to nitty gritty tech topics. They write an entire article based on “data from Downdetector” which as we know is garbage.
> >
> > The AP article you cited goes on to say:
> >
> > "Verizon had more than 2,000 outages and T-Mobile had more than 1,400 outages. Boost Mobile had about 700 outages.”
> >
> > NO THEY DIDN’T.
> >
> > Gahhhhh. An even halfway competent reporter would have said “Downdetector users reported more than 2,000 outages on Verizon, 1,400 on T-Mobile and 700 on Boost Mobile. Downdetector information consists of unconfirmed reports from individual users and do not represent official statements from those carriers."
> >
> > The media is so freaking lazy it is beyond disgusting. They take information from Downdetector, which is 100 percent user-submitted and is NOT an official source of anything, and build their entire article on it.
> >
> > So no, none of us should trust the media on these issues. None of us. I specifically DO NOT trust AP/Reuters/etc. because I am more technically competent than their reporters. All of us here are.
> >
> > -Andy
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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>
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