Cellular service appears to be down across every major provider throughout Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky with Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville being the hardest hit. According to the website Down Detector , more than 10, 000 AT&T, 1, 000 Verizon, 7, 000 T-Mobile and 300 Sprint customers are without internet or phone access. None of the affected companies have disclosed the specific reason for the outage yet, though they all have already issued vague statements about how they’re working on the issue. Update : Verizon is reporting the issue is resolved as of 8PM ET, however we haven’t seen an update from the others yet. Verizon issued the following statement after fielding numerous complaints on its Twitter account: A connectivity issue is causing a service interruption in our market. Our engineers are aware of this issue and are working with our vendor partners to resolve this issue quickly. At present we do not have an estimated time of resolution. As did T-Mobile: @baegail Customers across all carriers are affected in your region. Engineers are on it and working to restore your services asap! *MMH – T-Mobile USA (@TMobileHelp) August 4, 2015 Sprint followed the same pattern in its statement: We are aware of the impacts to service in which customers may be unable to access voice and some data services. This appears to be an issue caused by a local exchange provider and our network team is working with the provider to restore service to impacted customers as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience. As did AT&T: Some customers across parts of the Southeast are experiencing wireline and wireless service issues. We are investigating the cause and working as quickly as possible to restore service. We apologize for this inconvenience. According to Re/code , a Sprint rep has hinted that the issue originated at a local exchange provider that works with the affected companies. “We are aware of the impacts to service in which customers across multiple carriers may be unable to access voice and some data services, ” the rep said. “This appears to be an issue caused by a local exchange provider and our network team is working with the provider to restore service to impacted customers as quickly as possible.” Filed under: Internet , Mobile , Verizon , Sprint , AT&T , T-Mobile Comments Via: Gizmodo Source: WATE 6
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Cell service out for thousands across the American Southeast
An anonymous reader writes: A little over a month ago, Bill Gates made headlines when he decided to double down on his investments in renewable energy. Now, he’s written an article for Quartz explaining why: “I think this issue is especially important because, of all the people who will be affected by climate change, those in poor countries will suffer the most. Higher temperatures and less-predictable weather would hurt poor farmers, most of whom live on the edge and can be devastated by a single bad crop. Food supplies could decline. Hunger and malnutrition could rise. It would be a terrible injustice to let climate change undo any of the past half-century’s progress against poverty and disease — and doubly unfair because the people who will be hurt the most are the ones doing the least to cause the problem.” He also says government is not doing enough to fund such research, and that energy markets aren’t doing a good enough job of factoring the negative effects of carbon emissions. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Helping to dispel the notion that 3D printers are only really useful for making plastic trinkets, New Zealand’s Lance Abernethy is back with another impossibly tiny 3D-printed power tool that’s powered by an equally small hearing aid battery. Read more… 