What Happened To Cause Cell Phone Issues In St. Louis County This Week?

Yesterday (Thursday, February 12), I saw a lot of frustrated people on social media around parts of the Northland complaining about cell phone service issues.

I briefly ran into an issue myself, but wrote it off as a fluke. Looking back, it's probably because I was mostly in places I had wi-fi coverage.

Numerous other people in parts of Duluth, Hermantown, Proctor, and up the Highway 53 corridor to the Iron Range in towns like Virginia and Hibbing all experienced issues on Thursday.

A lot of people took to social media (likely using their wi-fi as well) to ask if they were the only ones experiencing issues, share frustrations, or make jokes about the issue. In the end, the widespread problem that impacted a sizable part of St. Louis County did have a root cause that (as I'm sure you discovered on your own) was resolved.

So, what was the issue?

Officials with the St. Louis County Sheriff's Office reported that a fiber optic line issue was the culprit that caused the sporadic cell phone service issues you may have experienced on Thursday.

Late Thursday afternoon, county officials acknowledged the problem and offered advice on how to make emergency calls in the event their cell phone service was not working.

Just before 8 am on Friday morning, officials with St. Louis County put out an update to let the public know that the fiber optic issues impacting cellular phone coverage across some of the most populated parts of St. Louis County had been resolved.