On Thursday, more than 75,000 Americans reported outages with AT&T (T) and other mobile phone providers, resulting in cell phone and internet service being shut down for nearly 12 hours. AT&T claimed to have addressed the concerns and restored service to customers. However, the company did not mention the cause of the failure.
Hugh Odom, founder and president of Vertical Consultants, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss recent failures by carriers and the possibilities behind the incident.
Odom suggested that part of the reason behind these failures could be the recent rollout of 5G coverage by providers and a severe lack of infrastructure.
“There is a lack of mobile phone sites. [in] The US is ready for 5G. That’s a simple fact. We are lagging behind compared to other countries in the world. Unless we build more cell towers and upgrade existing ones, this problem will continue in urban areas and especially in rural areas where coverage is expanding. And the big question is, AT&T recently announced that it is eliminating landlines, but most rural America relies on landlines for emergency services, so what do they do without wireless service? ”
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Editor’s note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino
