AT&T customers in Dallas, Texas are experiencing service outages after a fire in one of the telecom company’s facilities in the Dallas area. The company’s customer service account has been responding to customers’ complaints but hasn’t yet offered a timeline for a fix. The blanket statement just references the fire. Service appears to have been down for hours and is affecting AT&T U-verse, which provides internet and TV. Cell phone service isn’t affected. Although most of the complaints seem to be coming from Texas, Down Detector suggests that service might be down in other parts of the US, too, like Seattle and Portland. An AT&T spokesperson says these are unrelated, however.<doc-sep>Some AT&T customers experienced service outages Monday with their AT&T U-Verse television and internet services. The outage was due to a lightning strike that hit a facility for the company in the Dallas area, according to AT&T. "Damage caused by a fire at one of our facilities may be affecting internet service for some of our customers in the Dallas area. We are working to restore service as quickly as possible," was the message the account shared with many of the AT&T customers asking about the outage. When users asked how long the services would be down, AT&T said it wasn't sure. "At the moment we don't have an ETA on when services will be restored, however we're working hard to fix it. We appreciate your patience," the company tweeted to curious customers. Customers were also reporting the outage to the website Down Detector on Monday. Thousands of reports accumulated on the site in a matter of hours. The reports had to do with internet, phone and a lack of network or reception. The map on Down Detector showed the majority of the reports were coming from the Dallas area in addition to the Los Angeles area and some reports from other places like New York as well. The city of Richardson, Texas, about 15 miles north of Dallas, released a statement Monday about the incident. The statement said the Richardson Fire Department responded to a fire at an AT&T facility at 9:48 a.m. CDT. The fire was contained to an electrical room but the city said the cause of the fire still had yet to be determined, though AT&T shared on Twitter that lightning struck the facility. The firefighters left the scene of the fire at 12:15 p.m. CDT and there were no injuries that occurred during or due to the fire on the premises. It was unclear when the issues caused by the lightning and the fire would be resolved and when users would be back up and running with their internet and television services. "AT&T customers will need to contact AT&T for further information on repairs to their U-verse service," said the statement from the city of Richardson. This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.<doc-sep>Update: As of 9:25 p.m. Monday, AT&T technicians "restored service for internet customers in the Dallas area after service was interrupted by a fire at one of our facilities earlier today," the company told CBS DFW. DALLAS, TX — A lightning strike and subsequent fire at an AT&T data center in Richardson has caused internet issues for customers around Dallas. The company confirmed the outage on Twitter Monday afternoon after a customer complained. "Hi Garrett, thank you for bringing this to our attention. Due to a direct lightning strike on one of our facilities in the area, we are experiencing internet issues. We are currently working to restore service as quickly as possible," AT&T tweeted at 1:14 p.m.<doc-sep>NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) – AT&T had restored internet service to all customers late Monday night after an electrical fire at one of its facilities early Monday morning. An AT&T spokesperson released the following statement late Monday night: “Our technicians have restored service for internet customers in the Dallas area after service was interrupted by a fire at one of our facilities earlier today.” AT&T’s Uverse TV service is working again as well. Earlier Monday, AT&T tweeted out that a lightning strike had caused the fire and subsequent outage. But a spokesman told CBS 11 News that they haven’t confirmed what sparked the blaze. “Damage caused by a fire at one of our facilities may be affecting internet services for some of our customers in the Dallas area. We are working to restore service as quickly as possible,” said an AT&T spokesperson. The Richardson Fire Department responded to the fire at the data center on Firman Drive around 9:45 a.m., eventually clearing the scene after two hours. “We left crews on scene to evacuate the smoke. When that plastic burns, it’s pretty nasty smoke, so we made sure it was out of the building and that the fire was out,” said Richardson Fire Chief Curtis Poovey. The fire started at a power switch and burned primary and backup electrical systems. The fire department said it was an “undetermined electrical fire,” and that there’s no indication weather was a factor. Customers within the city of Richardson were impacted by the outage, specifically their internet and Uverse. The company hasn’t said exactly how many customers were affected. No one was hurt. There was plenty of juicy brisket at Lockhart Smokehouse, but there was no internet to run the register for credit card transactions during the outage. The Bishop Arts barbeque restaurant survived on good, old fashioned cash. “Luckily we have an ATM that’s down the hallway so we were just telling everyone, ‘I’m sorry, I apologize but we do have an ATM so just cash,’ ” said Diana Gaytan of Lockhart Smokehouse. Lockhart is one of possibly millions of AT&T customers who lost internet service Monday. “Just seems like a larger company like AT&T, I thought they’d have secure back ups or somewhere where you could stream from a second location,” said Sean Kim, a customer at Lockhart. AT&T wouldn’t tell CBS 11 News if it had a back up, but a telecommunications expert, Jaime Zarate, who worked for AT&T said, probably not. “AT&T has a phenomenal global network, it has a lot of redundancy built into it,” said Zarate. “What’s obvious is something in the way that they configured their Dallas internet service for their business and residential customers did not have redundancy, so it was exposed in some way. Sometimes they make business decision to maybe offer some kind of service in this area at the cost of maybe not having redundancy.” Zarate says an investigation into the fire is crucial in determining more since data centers are supposed to be more secure, and more resistant to fires.<doc-sep>
The fire was contained to an electrical room but burned primary and backup electrical systems, officials said. AT&T was still working Monday afternoon to fix the internet issues. UPDATE: As of 10:30 p.m. Monday, AT&T said they fixed the internet issues and resumed service for all internet users. Widespread AT&T internet outages were being reported across the DFW area on Monday after an electrical fire at an AT&T facility, officials said. The outage map website downdetector.com showed heavy concentrations of outages in Fort Worth, Dallas and Collin County. Firefighters had responded to a fire at an AT&T switching station in the 1600 block of Firman Drive about 9:45 a.m., Richardson city spokesman Greg Sowell said. The fire was contained to an electrical room and burned primary and backup electrical systems. On Twitter, an AT&T customer service account, @ATTCares, was responding to dozens of tweets about the outages, initially saying a "direct lightning strike" at the facility caused the outages. The account later tweeted that damage from the fire might have caused the outages. As of 1:30 p.m., AT&T was still working to fix the internet issues. Damage caused by a fire at one of our facilities may be affecting internet services for some of our customers in the Dallas area. We are working to restore service as quickly as possible. ^HectorR — ATTCares (@ATTCares) October 15, 2018 Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Due to a direct lightning strike on one of our facilities in the area, we are experiencing internet issues. We are currently working to restore service as quickly as possible. — ATTCares (@ATTCares) October 15, 2018