Cellcom’s CEO confirmed that a cyber incident is the cause of the outage that began May 14 and has left customers without phone service.
In a 2:46-long video posted on social media, Cellcom CEO Brighid Riordan said the incident is “segmented to the voice and texting part of your service.” She added that they have no evidence that personal information was impacted.
A link to the video and a letter addressed to Cellcom/Nsight customers. The Press-Gazette has requested an interview, but in an email, the company declined interviews and said it will continue to provide updates as appropriate.
“We are dealing with a cyber incident,” Riordan said in the video. “I want to come to you with facts, we simply don’t have a lot of facts.”
In the letter, Riordan said the company was following all protocols and had notified the FBI and Wisconsin officials. She said the incident was in an area of the network separate from where the company stores sensitive information about Cellcom and Nsight customers.
“We know this disruption has caused frustration and, for some, real hardship — and for that, I am truly sorry,” Riordan wrote.
The company will continue to work to restore full service currently limited to Cellcom-to-Cellcom texting and voice calls.
Cyber attacks have increased since August 2024
Hackers have been targeting telecommunications firms in the United States, according to a report by the Washington Post from Aug. 27. It was later reported that hackers had affected at least nine companies, including AT&T, Verizon, Lumen Technologies, and T-Mobile.
Late last year, the Biden administration also urged the FCC to impose regulations that would make it harder, riskier and costlier for hackers to access Americans’ data in response to the Chinese Salt Typhoon group hack in October, which affected an unknown number of Americans.
The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI also warned Android and Apple users about hackers going after text messages as part of “a broad and significant cyber espionage campaign.” At the time, those targeted were “a limited number of individuals who are primarily involved in government or political activity.”
When will Cellcom be back up?
The company did not provide a timeline for restoring full service in its latest communication.
Is service restored for some Cellcom users?
Kind of. About 4:15 p.m. May 19, the company posted that SMS texting had been restored and Cellcom customers can make and receive phone calls with other Cellcom customers.
For customers not seeing a resumption of some services, Cellcom advised them to turn on “airplane mode” for about 10 seconds and then turn it off. If that doesn’t work, Cellcom said try restarting your phone.
Will Cellcom refund customers?
The company has not said how it plans to address customers, though on the May 19 post on its website, Cellcom said, “Our teams remain 100% focused on getting everyone back online. Future plans will be addressed once that milestone is reached.”
Who owns Cellcom?
Nsight, the Howard-based telecommunications company, owns Cellcom as well as Nsight Telservices and Nsight Tower.
Ariel Perez is a business reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. You can reach him at APerez1@gannett.com or view his Twitter profile at @Ariel_Perez85.
