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Cellphone, data and landline services down for many in southeastern US [u]

Visualization of major carrier outage. | Source: Downdetector.com

An issue at a local provider appears to have impacted wireless and landline services in a handful of southeastern U.S. states on Tuesday, with customers reporting outages across all four major carriers.

According to Re/code, a problem first identified on AT&T's network is also affecting Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, leaving an unknown number of paying subscribers temporarily without service.

The exact nature of the issue has not been announced, though both Sprint and Verizon have traced the problem back to a local exchange provider, confirming multiple carriers are experiencing voice and data services outages in the region. Among the states affected Kentucky and Tennessee are hardest hit, the report said, citing information from Downdetector.com.

"We are aware of the impacts to service in which customers across multiple carriers may be unable to access voice and some data services," a Sprint representative said. "This appears to be an issue caused by a local exchange provider and our network team is working with the provider to restore service to impacted customers as quickly as possible."

A Verizon representative followed up by saying it is currently working with the unnamed provider to restore service, but cannot yet estimate when services will be fully restored.

Update: Sources informed Re/code that AT&T's landline network is to blame for the ongoing outages, as other telecoms rely on AT&T's backbone for transporting data. A company representative said AT&T is "investigating the cause and working as quickly as possible to restore service."