Just hours after announcing his retirement as President of Technology for T-Mobile following a 23-year stint at the wireless carrier, Neville Ray had to go into crisis mode Monday evening, as the company dealt with a national service outage affecting customers from New York to California.
At one point Monday evening, Down Detector counted over 80,000 T-Mobile network problem reports, with many users reporting no cellular network connection whatsoever. Users also took to Reddit to report problems.
"Our teams are rapidly addressing a 3rd party fiber interruption issue that has intermittently impacted some voice, messaging and data services in several areas. The situation is improving and we hope to have a full resolution very soon. We apologize for any disruption caused," Ray tweeted on Monday.
Ray later tweeted again saying network performance was stabilizing.
Earlier on Monday, T-Mobile announced Ray's departure, which is set for the fall. He'll be replaced by current Chief Network Officer Ulf Ewaldsson.
“There are so many things Neville has contributed to this company, but one of the most important has been his commitment to building the best, most effective technology team in this industry that will continue to deliver for our future," T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said in a statment. "Neville and his team have worked tirelessly to bring the Un-carrier from last to best in network performance and made T-Mobile’s network a true competitive weapon."
