Three days after an explosion in downtown Nashville damaged an AT&T transmission building and knocked out cellular service for many AT&T customers across the mid-South, the telephone giant said Monday it has restored its service to nearly all phone, internet and video customers in the region.
“Our mobility network is now operating normally,” AT&T said in a statement Monday morning after it was able to restore power to most of its bomb-damaged structure on Second Avenue in Nashville late Sunday.
To compensate for the outages that hit thousands of AT&T customers after the explosion early Christmas morning, AT&T said it is waiving all data overage charges Sunday through Thursday this week for customers in 1,166 ZIP codes affected by the outages in parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Alabama, Georgia, Illinois and Missouri. That includes most of Southeast Tennessee.
The bomb that exploded in a parked recreational vehicle along a deserted Second Avenue early Friday morning damaged more than 40 downtown buildings, but its impact stretched hundreds of miles due to the damages it caused to AT&T equipment and transmissions.
AT&T has not disclosed how many customers lost service as a result of the blast, but service interruptions, including a lack of credit card processing capability for some merchants, were cited in at least eight states over the Christmas weekend.
As of Monday, AT&T still had 11 portable cell sites running in the region to maintain phone and internet connections for its customers and first responders, but dozens of other portable sites have been shut off because they are no longer needed to maintain mobility service.
“We continue to manage power needs to prevent overloading the generators supporting our equipment,” AT&T said in a statement about its recovery efforts Monday. “Recovery work will continue today as we address the few remaining services and customers that still may be impacted by this event.
“Another 23 disaster recovery technology and support trailers arrived in Nashville Sunday to help maintain and make repairs in the days ahead. This equipment will be critical as we maintain service and make repairs in the days ahead.
“We will have resources standing by in the region as needed,” the company said.