On February 22, AT&T suffered a massive nationwide network outage that impacted users coast to coast. SmartSIM customers with mobile devices using the AT&T network did not experience a single service disruption. Their devices automatically failed over to the next available carrier, ensuring business as usual.

To illustrate, we pulled usage data from an enterprise customer that had set AT&T as their preferred carrier. When the outage occurred, all of their SmartSIM-enabled devices that lost connectivity immediately switched to other carriers.

February 21 – The Day Before the Outage

About 95 percent of total session time across all SIMS is on the AT&T network, with T-Mobile, Rogers and other carriers accounting for just 6 percent.

picture of session time day before outage

February 22 – The Day of the Outage

AT&T’s session time dropped to 81 percent because so many devices switched to T-Mobile, Verizon, Rogers or other carriers as a result of the outage.

When the network outage was resolved, the customer’s AT&T session time returned to pre-outage levels.

In assessing the incident, Forrester suggested it may be time for IT leaders relying on single-carrier cellular connectivity to consider multi-carrier redundant connectivity.

For more information and case studies involving SmartSIM multi-carrier connectivity for routers, tablets, computers and other mobile hardware devices, contact smartsim@advantix.net.