How a T-Mobile Outage Got Mistaken for a Cyber Attack
A mishap in T-Mobile’s network shows how lack of industry oversight and transparency can lead to harmful misinformation.
T-Mobile and its U.S. regulator allowed too much time for baseless speculation to spread.
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
The T-Mobile US Inc. network went down for about 13 hours beginning Monday afternoon, and it wasn’t until almost a full day later that the company explained why. The interim provided plenty of time for baseless rampant speculation of a cyber attack — on a nation that’s already on edge — without any official source acting to dispel it. The series of events points to continued shortcomings by the industry and the Federal Communications Commission in providing reliable data, transparency and sufficient oversight when it comes to the health of America’s networks.
Internet and phone connectivity has never been more important than it’s been in the last three months, with many Americans still working from home and social distancing to stem the spread of Covid-19, and yet so little information is ever disseminated about the status of the country’s networks. Helpful third-party websites track things like internet speeds around the U.S., but they all use different methodologies and there isn’t any official authority for such data — not even at the FCC. It’s often left up to the network operators to decide when and what to disclose publicly.