Opinion: How a T-Mobile outage got mistaken for a cyberattack

T-Mobile is known for having a highly active Twitter presence and for communicating directly with customers in a way that most other companies don’t. That culture, which has earned it high regard with consumers, was created by former CEO John Legere, who stepped down in April as T-Mobile completed its acquisition of Sprint Corp. But when it came to Monday’s technological difficulties, which began just after noon New York time, the company was initially vague. — Bloomberg

The T-Mobile US Inc network went down for about 13 hours beginning Monday afternoon, and it wasn’t until almost a full day later that the company explained why.

The interim provided plenty of time for baseless rampant speculation of a cyberattack – on a nation that’s already on edge – without any official source acting to dispel it. The series of events points to continued shortcomings by the industry and the US Federal Communications Commission in providing reliable data, transparency and sufficient oversight when it comes to the health of America’s networks.