The Christmas Day bombing in downtown Nashville led to communications outages over hundreds of miles in the southern U.S., raising concerns about the vulnerability of U.S. networks.
Widespread service outages followed the explosion, which damaged a major AT&T network hub, extended hundreds of miles to at least four neighboring states, disrupting 911 call centers, hospitals and flights out of the Nashville airport. While “nearly all services” were restored by Monday evening, three days after the blast, some outages remained through Wednesday — as do questions about what the U.S. can do to prevent future disruptions from attack or natural disasters.