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Update 8:15pm 5/29: Things seem to be stable now. We will monitor things and report if things change.
Update 7:45pm 5/29: Intermittent issues persist. Specific websites will fail to load or take extremely long to load. Examples include facebook.com and nbcnews.com. The issue is definitely still persisting, though it is “better”.
T-Mobile famously entered the home fiber business back in 2025 with the acquisition of Lumos fiber. Shortly after that, their acquisition with MetroNet was completed, and together (along with a few other smaller ISP acquisitions) the service became unified under the name T-Fiber.
Behind the scenes, however, a source confirms that each acquired ISP essentially still operates independently. Former Lumos engineers are now T-Fiber engineers, but still work on and support the original Lumos network.
This is important to know, because there’s currently an ongoing T-Fiber outage, and it only affects that Lumos market.
Around 1AM on May 28th, customers began noticing some websites weren’t loading correctly. The issue fluctuated over time, with some customers barely noticing an issue and others unable to connect to anything at all.
Here’s what we know and how T-Mobile has responded.
The outage
I happen to be in a T-Fiber service area, specifically that former Lumos market. It appears that only those in that market are affected, but all customers with that service are impacted, not just some. This impacts primarily those in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.
I noticed around 1AM on the 28th that my Google Home display was saying no connection. Other things were working, so I dismissed it as a temporary issue with the display, not an actual internet issue.
However, I soon realized that various websites on my phone were not loading. I thought my own equipment was to blame (self-hosted DNS, for those in the know), but it turns out the issue wasn’t DNS, at least on my end.
The outage is unique compared to most internet outages. The customer connection isn’t actually “down”, and the equipment shows a green light as if all is well. Instead, customers will find that many services and websites will simply never load.
A comparison I can make is that it’s like your navigation app on your phone knows how to get you to your destination, but on the way you find the only road there is closed for seemingly no reason.
T-Mobile’s questionable messaging
T-Mobile acknowledged the issue via email to affected customers at around noon on the 28th, almost a full 12 hours after the incident began.
You can see below that first email. In it, they apologize for not communicating quicker, and promise they’re working on a resolution.
At this point in time, the issue was at its peak. It was mid-day, and wait times for customers calling in to T-Fiber support were well over an hour.
You may also notice a certain AI style to the email too. I noticed it, but a one-off can be forgiven. Unfortunately, the use of AI to generate these customer emails continued with the next email, sent around 6PM that night.
I am primarily against AI in many cases, but I understand its use in certain scenarios. Personally, I don’t think crafting an email to thousands of customers with an internet outage to be one of them. It lacks personality and makes it seem like someone couldn’t be bothered to type out a two-paragraph response to people going without home internet.
Regardless, the email claimed that hardware had been replaced and further repairs were underway. They also promised to communicate again once the issue was resolved.
They then did so around 3:30AM this morning, May 29th.
Great news, right? The issue is resolved, and a simple equipment reboot should fix the issue. Unfortunately it wasn’t that simple.
I personally received the email and attempted to restart my equipment. I’m a night owl, so I happened to be awake. The reboot made no change.
Other users on Reddit also found that the claim of restored service wasn’t quite accurate. “Got an email this morning saying our service is restored. It’s not.”
This was the last email T-Fiber sent to customers. As of the time of this post, the service still isn’t fully working.
Response from T-Mobile Media Relations
We reached out to T-Mobile directly to inquire about the situation. We received the following response.
We’re continuing to respond to a network equipment issue affecting some T-Fiber customers. Although service has been restored for many customers, some continue to experience interruptions, and restoration efforts remain ongoing.
– T-Mobile
Our teams have identified the cause and are working urgently to fully restore service. We recognize that some customers received a message indicating service had been restored and understand the confusion that may have caused. We apologize and are committed to keeping customers informed as we make progress.
We’re also told that T-Fiber is crafting another email for affected customers, and we’ll update this post once we receive it.
We’ve also inquired about whether or not customers can expect an account credit once the outage is resolved. I’ve seen multiple comments online about how people work from home, and certain services they require are unreachable, potentially costing them revenue. We haven’t yet received a response but we’ll update if we do.
At the end of the day, internet outages happen. However, for it to last well over 36 hours and affect the entire East Coast is nearing unacceptable. At the time of posting, my service seems to just now be recovering. Sites such as Facebook and NBC News, which were failing to load entirely for the length of the outage, are now loading properly.
Hopefully mitigations are put in place to avoid such long outages moving forward.
