Cause of AT&T outage in major metro revealed

Central Texas AT&T service outage lasted 1 hour

A severed fiber optic cable is to blame for a major AT&T service outage in Central Texas on Sunday. The outage, which started around noon, left thousands of AT&T customers without cell service for about an hour as technicians worked to fix the problem.

Bastrop County Emergency Operations Center tweeted this statement Sunday afternoon pinpointing the cause:

Bastrop County is about 45 minutes east of Austin, Texas. The outage affected Austin and many of the surrounding areas.

According to Austin-Travis County EMS, the outage also left those affected without 911 service.

AT&T released this statement Sunday afternoon announcing the outage:

Many customers had to reboot their phones to restore service.

For a timeline of the outage, go here.

AT&T invested nearly $550 million in its Austin area wireless and wireline networks from 2011 through 2013, according to the company.