This story, originally published at 9:27 a.m. on Feb. 22, 2024, was updated at 3:35 p.m. to add that the outages have been resolved.
Montgomery County’s Office of Emergency Management & Homeland Security announced at 3:28 p.m. that the cellular outages affecting people nationwide are over.
Around 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, Montgomery County Police said that nationwide reports of cellular outages could affect the ability of individuals to call 911.
The carriers affected included AT&T, Consumer Cellular, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Verizon and First Net (nationwide wireless broadband network for first responders), according to police.
Police urged residents who need to contact 911 for an emergency to use a landline or send a text to 911 since that is not impacted by the outages.
Also, police posted on social media around 11 a.m. saying that the Montgomery County Emergency Communications Center is asking people to stop calling 911 to test their phones. They said it should be reserved for emergencies only.
Montgomery County Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Earl Stoddard said the issues had been intermittent.