Mobile or internet down: what to check before you call (the United States)
Checked on
When your phone or internet stops working, you need to know if the whole network is down or just your connection. This page helps you separate the two cases and tells you what to do next, including when to contact your provider or file a complaint.
Is the network down, or only your phone?
The service page of this site shows the status based on reports from the last day. It compares recent reports with the usual level for that service to suggest whether it is down. This status comes from what people reported, not from the provider.
Check the official website of your provider. If the website loads, that does not mean the service itself works. If it is unreachable, that does not prove the network is down. A website can be slow or broken while the phone or internet works fine.
What to check before you call
To tell if the problem is yours or the network, try the service on a different device. Try connecting through a different method. If you are on wifi, try mobile data, or the other way.
Look at the chart and map on the service page here. If you see reports from other places right now, the network may be down. If there are no recent reports, that does not tell you the network works—it only means nobody reported. Check what the company itself published. Read their help pages.
You can report the problem on this site once per hour. Reports help others see if the issue is widespread.
- Try another device, another connection, check the map, read the help pages, and report
Who can confirm an outage, and how to reach your provider
When a service publishes its own status page, this site links to it on the service card. That is the official word. The help pages and contact pages of the service are also linked when we have them.
Read what the provider itself has published. Some outages are invisible to this site, above all very local ones and faults that affect only a few users. Do not rely only on our reports.
If it stays unresolved: where to complain
Take the problem to your provider before you go to a regulator. That step matters.
If your provider has not fixed it, you may send an informal complaint to the FCC. A federal agency can help resolve problems with phone, internet, and TV services. When you file, the FCC may send your complaint to the provider. After the FCC forwards it, the provider has 30 days to reply. You can file your complaint through the FCC's official page.
Check the live ranking of the most reported services right now on this site. Which services are down today →
Sources and date
The facts about public bodies come from their own pages, read on :
- FCC - consumer complaints: fcc.gov/consumers/guides/filing-informal-complaint
What we say about this site rests on our methodology.