Southeast Missourian

AT&T wireless customers across a wide stretch of its Southeastern and Central U.S. service areas lost the ability to send and receive digital data Thursday, Missouri spokeswoman Chelsey Ilten said.

The cause of the outage was unclear late Thursday afternoon, she said. Voice and text messaging services continued in operation and some devices were unaffected by the outage, Ilten said.

"We are still looking to pinpoint exactly the cause," she said.

Customers in some states reported no problems at all, Ilten said. Those most immediately affected are customers of the Edge digital network, also known as third-generation service. The service is focused on highway corridors.

Service was restored to all areas by late afternoon Thursday, Ilten said.