February 22, 2024 2:03 PM ET
Telecommunications experts told CNN that service outages usually happen for routine reasons.
From CNN's Brian Huang
Brooke Joyner/CNN
While Thursday's AT&T outage made national headlines, multiple communications experts told CNN that outages do happen, and they usually happen for mundane reasons.
Public safety communications expert TJ Kennedy said common causes include construction-related drilling to drill holes in fiber optic cables and software misconfigurations that can lead to interruptions.
“I can't remember all the incidents over the past few years, but I can remember some that were router-related, some that were backhaul-related, and some that were software-related,” Kennedy said. “This has happened with all the major carriers, and has happened multiple times in the past few years alone.”
Lee McKnight, an associate professor at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, said Thursday's outage may have been caused by human error in AT&T's cloud-based networking system.
“The dirty secret of modern communications networks is that they're just a bunch of wires and towers connected to the cloud.,” McKnight said. “It's common in cloud computing that when someone makes a mistake, the rest of the team and their automation tools don't notice it.”