AT&T announced a nationwide cellular outage earlier today. The reason for the outage is still unknown.

Carter DeVault, senior, first noticed the outage early this morning. 

“I noticed this morning on my drive to school, I was trying to listen to music and it wasn’t working,” DeVault said. 

The outage has also affected students’ ability to easily contact parents, having to go through alternative applications. DeVault thanks Life360 for aiding communications with his parents despite having no connection.

It seems as though AT&T users are affected more than others, with some phones on “SOS” and others hanging on 1 bar. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported outages with other service providers such as T-Mobile and Verizon as well. 

Principal Dr. Tracy Waeckerle said that while the outage poses an inconvenience for students and staff, the school day should be uninterrupted.

“I don’t think it’s going to have any impact on the school day because our school phones still work, so parents can still get ahold of students, and if students need to get ahold of a parent, they can go to an office,” Dr. Waeckerle said.

Chromebooks, computers and school phones are operating as usual. Instruction is virtually unhindered.

“It could actually help our school day, with less distractions,” Dr. Waeckerle said. “It’s not essential for students to have their phones for the school day because our internet still works in the school.”

Becky Eaton, Instructional Technology staff member, said quick communications were hindered for her and others this morning. 

“For me, it’s really difficult because with my role in the district, I travel from building to building,” Eaton said. “So I rely heavily on my phone for email and contacting people and stuff like that, and if I’m not on district WiFi, my phone is a paperweight.”

AT&T cellular returned around 11 a.m.