Month: February 2024

AT&T has resolved a widespread outage that had affected over 70,000 customers by 8AM ET, according to tracking site Downdetector. Most of these issues were centered in Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Atlanta. This impacted cellular service and data connections, with many customers noting that they couldn’t even contact 911.

It’s still unclear as to what caused the service interruption. In a brief statement to CNBC, AT&T said it is “working urgently to restore service.” The company encouraged customers to make use of Wi-Fi calling until the problem is handled.

Thousands of Verizon and T-Mobile customers also reported outages, but both companies said that those impacted had been trying to contact AT&T numbers. The market has declared this a serious problem, as AT&T shares were down nearly three percent as of this story’s original publish time.

Cellular interruptions are a regular part of life, but the fact that many impacted customers cannot contact 911 and other emergency services is particularly worrisome. The San Francisco Fire Department has urged city residents to try calling 911 from a landline or to “get ahold of a friend or family member” who has signed up for a different carrier.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens noted that the city employees could make and receive 911 calls, but that many AT&T customers could not. Dickens has suggested that city residents contact AT&T for service inquiries, and not Atlanta’s emergency services system. The Massachusetts State Police echoed this sentiment, noting that customers had been flooding its 911 center with inquiries about cellular service. “Please do not do this,” the law enforcement agency wrote on X.

This is an ongoing issue and we’ll update this story when the service is restored or when AT&T issues an update on the cause.

Update, February 22 2024, 3:55PM ET: This story has been updated to reflect that AT&T has since restored its cellphone service nationwide.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-cellphone-outage-hits-thousands-of-att-users-nationwide-162000029.html?src=rss

Google has struck a deal with Reddit that will allow the search engine maker to train its AI models on Reddit’s vast catalog of user-generated content, the two companies announced. Under the arrangement, Google will get access to Reddit’s Data API, which will help the company “better understand” content from the site.

The deal also provides Google with a valuable source of content it can use to train its AI models. “Google will now have efficient and structured access to fresher information, as well as enhanced signals that will help us better understand Reddit content and display, train on, and otherwise use it in the most accurate and relevant ways,” the company said in a statement.

Access to Reddit’s data became a hot-button issue last year when the company announced it would start charging developers to the use its API. The changes resulted in the shuttering of many third-party Reddit clients, and a sitewide protest in which thousands of subreddits temporarily “went dark.” Reddit justified the changes, in part, by saying that large AI companies were scraping its data without paying. In a statement, Reddit noted that the new arrangement with Google “does not change Reddit’s Data API Terms or Developer Terms” and that “API access remains free for non-commercial usage.”

The deal comes as Reddit is expected to go public in the coming weeks. Neither Google or Reddit disclosed the terms of their arrangement but Bloomberg reported last week that Reddit had struck a licensing deal with a “large AI company” valued at “about $60 million” a year. That amount was also confirmed by Reuters, which was first to report Google’s involvement.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/reddit-is-licensing-its-content-to-google-to-help-train-its-ai-models-200013007.html?src=rss