Facepalm: Roaming service is essential for affordable internet connectivity while traveling overseas. However, when mobile carriers rely on a third-party company to provide this service, things can become challenging if a Wi-Fi network is not readily available.
AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile US customers have been experiencing significant disruptions in roaming connectivity for at least a couple of days. Since all three major mobile carriers are facing the same issue, it is likely that a third-party company is responsible for the outage.
The company in question is Syniverse, a US provider of 5G roaming connectivity and other communication services. According to Syniverse, the company processes over $35 billion in transactions, 5.5 exabits of data, and more than a trillion messages per year. Syniverse plays a crucial role in connecting 7.4 billion devices across nearly 200 countries and territories around the world.
The company recently explained that the roaming outage affecting AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile customers began on the morning of June 26. Syniverse described it as an “intermittent service disruption,” which has made internet access difficult for US travelers, preventing calls, messages, and access to mobile applications while roaming.
All three US mobile carriers confirmed the issue, stating that they were working with a third-party company (Syniverse) to restore full service. T-Mobile said it was one of “several providers” impacted by Syniverse’s outage, which was intermittently affecting some international roaming services. AT&T stated that its network was functioning as expected, although some customers traveling outside the US “may be experiencing” some service disruptions.
Verizon provided additional details about the outage, stating that 70 percent of all calls and data connections were going through with no detectable issues. Syniverse expressed its “sincere” apology for the outage, emphasizing how mobile connectivity has become a critical part of everyone’s daily life. The company assured that it is “working around the clock to resolve this issue” in collaboration with the affected mobile network operators.
This is one of several issues that AT&T has experienced this year. In February, the telecom giant faced issues that forced wireless service customers offline while earlier this month, another problem arose in which AT&T subscribers were unable to call non-AT&T customers. Even if the current issue is Syniverse’s fault, mobile device users are likely to blame AT&T for this latest outage.
