Nine-hour network outage cripples AT&T mobile data traffic

Beginning at around 5:30 EST on Thursday, AT&T's EDGE and UMTS data networks went down for reasons even now unknown to company technicians.

AT&T has not reported what the cause of the outage was, or even how many customers were affected. Message boards tracking user complaints counted 18 states among those suffering from lost 2.5/3G connectivity. These states were: Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Indiana, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nevada, New York, Wisconsin, and Illinois.

Blackberry users yesterday were greeted with "data connection refused" messages, and iPhone users saw the "Could not activate EDGE" alert. Voice traffic, however was reportedly not affected.

This week has seen tremendous disruptions in communication due to the severance of important data lines, and international commerce will no doubt reveal the consequences for weeks to come.