Americans Abroad Cut Off As AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile Suffer International Roaming Outages (theregister.com) 21
Many American subscribers are unable to use their phones overseas because all three major U.S. carriers are experiencing outages. According to The Register, the outages have been ongoing for several hours and stem from third-party communications technology company Syniverse. From the report: "Since the onset of these issues, Syniverse has been working closely with our network partners to restore full service," Syniverse, a US-based comms provider that focuses on roaming services, said in a statement confirming the breakdown. "We understand the inconvenience this has caused and appreciate your patience as we navigate this challenge."
"We're one of several providers impacted by a third-party vendor's issue that is intermittently affecting some international roaming service," T-Mo told us. "We're working with them to resolve it." Similarly, AT&T stated: "The AT&T network is operating normally. Some customers traveling internationally may be experiencing service disruptions due to an issue outside the AT&T network. We're working with one of our roaming connectivity providers to resolve the issue." Likewise, Verizon said, "An international third party communications provider is having issues with making voice and data connections with US based customers traveling overseas."
The international roaming outage has hit users' ability to do calls and texts, and reach the internet. According to Verizon, it's not a complete blackout. "70 percent of calls and data connections are going through at this time," the carrier firm told The Register in the past hour or so. Developing...
"We're one of several providers impacted by a third-party vendor's issue that is intermittently affecting some international roaming service," T-Mo told us. "We're working with them to resolve it." Similarly, AT&T stated: "The AT&T network is operating normally. Some customers traveling internationally may be experiencing service disruptions due to an issue outside the AT&T network. We're working with one of our roaming connectivity providers to resolve the issue." Likewise, Verizon said, "An international third party communications provider is having issues with making voice and data connections with US based customers traveling overseas."
The international roaming outage has hit users' ability to do calls and texts, and reach the internet. According to Verizon, it's not a complete blackout. "70 percent of calls and data connections are going through at this time," the carrier firm told The Register in the past hour or so. Developing...
All the eggs in one basket. (Score:3)
This is how something important to society fails horribly. No redundancy because 'costs.'
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"You might have too much consolidation if..."
Lemme guess, the single provider is a spy-agenfy cut-out?
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"You might have too much consolidation if..."
Lemme guess, the single provider is a spy-agenfy cut-out?
I dunno 'bout dat ... but I do know that Syniverse has held this role for 10 years or more with US cell carriers and their service has been quite reliable in that respect.
So before this very public "event", and if you had not worked in the telecommunications industry, and namely in cellular service ... would you have known who Syniverse was and what they did as a business?
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> I dunno 'bout dat
“Syniverse [wikipedia.org] is a communications technology company
Buy an EU eSIM and use that while in the EU (Score:3)
Re:Buy an EU eSIM and use that while in the EU (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't work. That article is written for Americans, but the outage affects EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE. I am currently in Latvia, recently out of Norway, and everyone is out. Natives and tourists alike. Cellular network in the entire country is down; it's due to the backbone provider and international roaming agreements.
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Doesn't work. That article is written for Americans, but the outage affects EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE. I am currently in Latvia, recently out of Norway, and everyone is out. Natives and tourists alike. Cellular network in the entire country is down; it's due to the backbone provider and international roaming agreements.
Thank you.
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More than that, my international travel experience shows that people getting "cut off" from international roaming are paying orders of magnitude more than if they would have gotten a local SIM.
Last time I traveled on ATT or Verizon they wanted like $15 a day for international roaming. Or I could get an eSIM that is good for a month for like $8.
Our wireless providers are fucking terrible.
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I am not an American, but isn't the $15/day fee effectively unavoidable? You do want to be able to reach your bank if anything goes wrong, and unless something has changed recently, everyone is still using SMS for 2FA, and you need your US SIM for that.
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Nope!
1. My US bank does two fuckt'her authentication via e-mail (and I set it up with an email that doesn't require 2FA), so I don't need a working US phone number.
2. T-mobile will roam on Wifi, so I can have US voice/text service outside the US without paying a dime as long as I'm connected to Wifi. Then use the foreign SIM for data service. With the right kind of 2-SIM phone, you can even use the foreign SIM to provide data service that the US SIM uses for Wifi calling! Or if you have two phones, teth
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You can avoid it by not agreeing to it. They send you an SMS that you need to reply to before it turns on. You can just not send the affirmative reply - you'll even still receive SMS texts but you won't be able to reply from that number or use the data service on that SIM.
But if you have a dual-SIM phone, who cares - get a local SIM and reply via data-based messenger service (Whatsapp, Telegram, Discord, whatever). I was in Ireland when someone decided to try to defraud one of my bank accounts and they s
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I use T-Mobile, and get international roaming (data at "2G speed", typically 128 kbit/sec, and text) for no additional cost. When I'm roaming, voice calls are charged per minute and there are various options for high speed data. An in-country eSIM is almost always cheaper than T-Mobile's high speed data options, but the basic data is usable with patience.
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Don't you have to have a post-paid plan that's a ripoffalicous $50 per month or more for that to work? My $15/mo prepaid T-mo plan has never worked for ANY data outside the US, but I can just get a local SIM for under $10 and set up service when arriving.
Nice thing about T-mobile, though, is that Wifi voice/texting works anywhere in the world, so you can tether your US phone to one that has the foreign SIM in it. Use the US phone for calling/two fuckt'her auth, use the foreign SIM as a hotspot.
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Can't use T-Mobile, because they can't manage to get useable signal into my home inside the city limits of a top-25 metro area in the US.
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Which is all well and good until I have a power outage. Then I have no phone with which to call the power company to inform them.
Also: not choosing a phone carrier based on the 1 international trip I may take in a year, as opposed to the other 50+ weeks that I would have to live with shitty service when home. I can fix the international concern by getting an eSIM on my phone activated and working before the plane even arrives at the gate.
I'm not saying it's (Score:1)
...Russian aliens, but
It's Russian Aliens!
Run in heels! I mean for the hills! Okay, either, it's a free country, be yourself!
Americans using roaming are suckers (Score:2)
Polish SIM that works in basically all of Europe ... $7 per month for 5GB in EU; 30GB within Poland. Claro SIM in Dominican Republic ... $5.
Pre-paid US T-Mobile plan, $15 per month. Cheapers post-paid plan that supports int'l roaming is $60/mo, or $45/mo for a service that you can get for a fraction of the price. Suckaz!
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Polish SIM that works in basically all of Europe ... $7 per month for 5GB in EU; 30GB within Poland. Claro SIM in Dominican Republic ... $5.
Pre-paid US T-Mobile plan, $15 per month. Cheapers post-paid plan that supports int'l roaming is $60/mo, or $45/mo for a service that you can get for a fraction of the price. Suckaz!
I agree with the sentiments, but a lot of American phones are carrier locked and carriers refuse to unlock them, so they won't connect to a foreign network using a foreign SIM. Also some US phones use a different frequency to the ROTW, this may have narrowed somewhat with 5G (I've not kept that up to date as I'm not an American).
But if you travel abroad frequently and don't have an unlocked phone capable of interacting with overseas networks, you're definitely asking for (financial) punishment.
As a UK