MNO Cellcom, operating in Michigan and Wisconsin, said that a cyberattack is behind the widespread service outages plaguing thousands of customers over the past week. The outage, which began last Wednesday, has left many Cellcom customers without the ability to make calls or send SMS messages. The company, a subsidiary of Nsight, announced yesterday it is making progress in restoring services in the wake of the outages although intermittent disruptions may continue as part of the ongoing recovery efforts.
Cellcom CEO Brighid Riordan confirmed in a video address that the company is responding to what she described as a “cyber incident,” though she acknowledged the full details remain unclear. “The incident is affecting only the voice and texting components of our network,” Riordan said. “We’ve activated our response protocols and are working diligently to resolve the situation.”
“We live in a world where threat actors work as hard to cause harm as we do to prevent it,” Riordan said. In a letter accompanying the video, Riordan noted that the FBI and Wisconsin state officials are now assisting in the investigation, alongside cybersecurity professionals.
Partial service was restored Monday, including calls between Cellcom users and limited texting capabilities. According to the company, the attack targeted a segment of the network isolated from customer data.
Despite ongoing recovery efforts, Cellcom said Wednesday it cannot yet provide a timeline for full restoration. Additional experts are being flown in to accelerate the process.
Cellcom offers wireless voice, text, and internet services across Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. As frustrations mount, the company has also faced backlash for its inability to assist customers wishing to switch providers or port their numbers to carriers like Verizon.
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