Learn how the recent AT&T outage is affecting transportation technology platforms and electronic logging devices (ELDs) in the trucking industry. 

Truck Tech Impacted by AT&T Outage: What’s Happening

On Thursday morning, AT&T experienced widespread outages of its cellular networks across the United States. While there have been no mass reports of driver connectivity issues, back-end TMS and visibility systems are experiencing outages.

Transportation tech platforms such as Motive, Samsara, and Trimble have reported issues, warning customers of potential problems. These systems rely on cellular data to track drivers’ locations, send messages, and dispatch information, so an AT&T outage can disrupt these communications.

As of press time, Omnitracs and Verizon Connect were among the platforms not affected.

Why is a Cell Outage a Big Deal for Trucking?

ELDs (electronic logging devices) rely on cellular providers through the device itself or by connecting to a driver’s cell phone, according to Thomas Wasson, FreightWaves’ enterprise trucking expert.

An outage at a large nationwide provider like AT&T affects both ELD devices and drivers whose cell phones are connected to the AT&T network, resulting in outages and potential log errors. For fleets and safety departments, log errors or omissions of hours of service can lead to what appear to be falsified logs if a driver’s impacted logs are inspected and fail to account for missing time.

Workarounds and Challenges

For carriers affected by the outage, one workaround is to have drivers revert to manual paper logs until service is restored. However, this adds the challenge of securing paper logbooks, which can result in extra costs and out-of-route miles. Afterward, drivers will need to account for the missing time in the ELD once functionality is restored.

Another challenge is the gaps in driver position and location history, which may impact automated tracking and cause disruptions to service. Customers and freight brokers may note inaccurate location updates when determining an ETA.

Drivers themselves may not always notice these outages since their ELDs will display the correct time, but back-office staff may be concerned if a driver shows a certain distance out for several hours without updating.

Outlook

It is likely that some platforms will come back online throughout the day, but the impact for drivers will be felt later on.

AT&T has issued a statement about the widespread outage, but the cause has not yet been identified. An industry source told CNN that it could be related to how cellular services hand off calls from one network to another.