The worst nightmare for T-Mobile subscribers happened on Friday (Update: T-Mobile responds)

UPDATE: T-Mobile denies that any customer lost their connection to the T-Mobile network during the T-Life outage. Our original report said that a few subscribers did have problems and based on email I received from T-Mobile, any phone issue had to be coincidental and unrelated to the T-Life outage.

The statement from T-Mobile is as follows: “We experienced a brief internal IT issue Friday morning that interrupted certain T-Mobile applications and systems. Our teams worked quickly to resolve the issue, and all systems operated normally once resolved. There was no impact to our network, including wireless or home internet service. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused our customers and employees.”

The original story, with changes made to the sentences about phone customers, follows:

As T-Mobile makes the transition to a digital carrier, replacing commissioned sales reps with the T-Life app, the company also expects to save money by closing stores. In other words, T-Mobile will be heavily relying on the T-Life app and that makes customers, sales reps, and executives very wary. Until recently, the app itself was fairly glitchy and twitchy. Since the app handles all orders and payments, T-Mobile customers have to wonder what would happen if the T-Life app went down. That scenario actually played out the other day.

The T-Life app went down on Friday

On Friday, connectivity issues caused the T-Life app to go down. The outage affected T-Mobile customers including those trying to access their accounts. T-Mobile executives attempting to get into the carrier’s backend systems also failed in their efforts to do so. Besides the outage to the T-Life app, the 611 customer service number, dialed from T-Mobile connected devices, also failed to work. Those T-Mobile customers needing help and unable to dial 611 to get answers to their questions had few options other than waiting for the T-Life app to come back to life, which it did.

The T-Life app went down for many T-Mobile subscribers on Friday. | Image by PhoneArena

Considering that most customers are being told to use the T-Life app exclusively to manage their account, when T-Life goes down, customers and T-Mobile both lose. It is unknown exactly what caused the outage, although one possibility is that changes made to T-Mobile‘s dashboard systems accidentally set off the problem. Access to T-Life returned after a few hours indicating that whatever caused the app to go down was a temporary issue and not a permanent one.

T-Mobile denies that any customer had an issue with their phone service

Uncharacteristically, T-Mobile was silent about the outage refraining to mention it on its social media channels and via notifications to its customers’ devices. Speaking of these devices, most subscribers did not lose phone service, although a few have complained about losing connectivity to the T-Mobile mobile network. Those subscribers are in the minority as most were simply unable to find out information about their accounts and transact any business with the carrier. T-Mobile says that no mobile subscribers lost their connection to the network.

It’s possible that while the service returned for most, T-Life could remain out of service for a few subscribers.

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