AT&T's U-verse broadband service is currently suffering a nationwide outage, a technician confirmed Monday morning.
The carrier has yet to confirm the outage in a statement or on its social media sites, but a call into AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T)'s support center confirmed U-verse is down across the country. A support representative said that most reports indicate limited web functions are working, but browsing is stalled and web pages won't load.
She also offered this reporter a credit once the outage is resolved, although had no timeline on when that might happen. According to several tweets, the outage has been going on for at least the past seven hours.
This isn't the first outage AT&T's broadband service has experienced. In fact, it's one of several this month alone. How a service provider handles its customers and explains an outage like this often goes a long way in helping -- or hurting -- its reputation. (See AT&T U-verse Website Outage, AT&T Confirms U-verse 'Issue', AT&T Faces Backlash Over U-verse Outage, AT&T Says U-verse Is Back Online, and The Big Deal About Small Outages.)
[UPDATE: AT&T's official statement on the outage was that it only affected a "limited number of AT&T customers across multiple states" due to a third-party web hosting service issue. The Down Detector site, which tracks outages and technology failures, shows U-Verse outages in several parts of California, Texas, New York, Chicago, Missouri, and several other states. Complaints to AT&T peaked at 1,091, a relatively large number for residential use in the morning of a work day. (See AT&T Remedies U-Verse Broadband Outage.)]
— Sarah Reedy, Senior Editor, Light Reading