Update, 4 p.m. Friday: GCI says it has fixed the problem that interfered with its customers' cellphone service for much of the day Friday.
"Mobile service has been restored or will soon be restored to all customers," the company said in a statement around 4 p.m. "We apologize for any inconvenience. Thanks for your patience today."
Heather Handyside, a spokeswoman for GCI, said the service issue impacted most of its customers with iPhones and many who have Android devices.
The outage was caused by a problem with part of the network that routes calls and directs them to the right number, she said in a statement.
"GCI was able to pinpoint the issue and reconfigure the equipment to restore service," she said.
Original story:
GCI says it's working to fix service issues for its wireless customers Friday after Alaskans across the state reported they couldn't make or receive calls on their cellphones.
The problems started around 5:30 a.m. Friday, according to a statement from the Alaska telecommunications company. About eight hours later, issues remained.
"Service interruptions appear to be impacting both Android and iPhones," the statement said. "Service has been partially restored for some LTE customers but 4G LTE data, 4G LTE voice, 3G voice and voice-over-wifi services continue to be impacted statewide."
GCI said technicians and engineers are working to fix the service issue. The company apologized for any inconvenience the issues caused its customers.
A GCI spokeswoman said she did not have additional information Friday afternoon aside from the company's statement.
The statement did not include information about how many customers are affected by the service issues, what caused the problems or when the company expects a fix.
Some GCI customers are reporting that they are unable to make or receive calls from their wireless phones. Our team is...
Posted by GCI on Friday, May 11, 2018
This is a developing story and will be updated.