Midwestern telco Cellcom confirms cyber incident after days of service outages

A large telecommunications firm serving Michigan and Wisconsin said on Tuesday a cyberattack was the cause of service outages that have persisted for the last week. 

In a video message on Tuesday evening, Cellcom CEO Brighid Riordan said the company has been dealing with a “cyber incident” but admitted they “simply don’t have a lot of facts.”

“The cyber incident that we're experiencing is segmented to the voice and texting parts of your service … “We're prepared for these incidents, and we are rolling our protocol through this,” Riordan said. 

“We live in a world where they are working on how to do damage just as hard as we are working to prevent it.”

Riordan published a letter alongside her video, noting that in addition to cybersecurity experts, the FBI and Wisconsin officials have been involved in the response. 

Thousands of Cellcom customers have been without voice and SMS texting services since last Wednesday when the outages first began. 

The company has not responded to requests for comment about whether they are dealing with a ransomware incident and did not cite a cyber incident as the cause of the outage until Tuesday. 

Calls between Cellcom customers and some SMS text services were restored on Monday, and the company said  the incident was concentrated on a part of the network that is separate from where customer data is held. 

As of Wednesday, Cellcom still could not provide a timeline for when services will be fully restored but said experts were being flown in to help with the recovery. 

Cellcom, a subsidiary of Nsight, provides text and voice services as well as internet to people and businesses throughout Wisconsin and Upper Michigan.  

Amid the deluge of angry messages from customers, the company noted it was unable to provide people with the information needed to switch telecommunication services and port phone numbers to other companies like Verizon, further angering those struggling with the outages. 

Cellcom acknowledged in Facebook messages that customers had missed job interviews, important family calls, and more.