Microsoft Services Now ‘Operating Normally’ On AT&T Networks After Outage

The outage Thursday morning had prevented some AT&T users from accessing Microsoft 365 and Azure services.

AT&T said that “connections are operating normally” as of mid-morning Thursday, EDT, following reports that Microsoft 365 and Azure services were inaccessible for AT&T users earlier in the morning.

Microsoft also confirmed that the issues that caused the outage for AT&T users have been fixed. “A third-party Internet Service Provider incident that impacted a subset of their customers' ability to access our services is now fully resolved,” Microsoft said in a statement provided to CRN.

In a post on X, Microsoft indicated that the outage was caused by an unspecified “change” within the managed environment of a third-party internet service provider, elsewhere identified as AT&T.

For about 90 minutes Thursday morning, EDT, “customers using AT&T to connect to Microsoft services experienced issues accessing our services,” Microsoft said on its Azure status page.

At 10:45 a.m. Thursday, EDT, the Microsoft 365 X account disclosed that the outage had been resolved.

“We've monitored our systems and confirmed that impact has been remediated,” Microsoft said in the post.

Likewise, Microsoft’s Azure status account on X posted that “we can confirm the issue impacting connectivity to Microsoft services is now mitigated.”

In a statement provided to CRN Thursday, AT&T said that “we experienced a brief disruption connecting to some Microsoft services on our network.”

“The issue has been resolved and connections are operating normally,” the company said.

Microsoft had earlier reported that the outage had prevented some users from accessing Azure and Microsoft 365 services starting Thursday morning, EDT.

Reports of the outage on DownDetector.com began prior to 8 a.m. EDT, Thursday, and reports on the site escalated in the following hour.

The incident follows the major outage in late July that impacted services including Microsoft 365 and Azure.

In that case, the outage was initially caused by a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack, though the outage was worsened due to an “error” by the Microsoft response effort, the company disclosed.