Last night, I attended a performance of Star Wars: In Concert. As I arrived at the venue, I saw that my HTC-G1 had no reception. That’s unusual — T-Mobile’s coverage in Atlanta tends to be pretty strong. I met up with my wife and we took our seats. Her cell phone, also on T-Mobile, still had reception. But she noticed that she wasn’t able to send text messages. Something was definitely odd.

As John Williams’ music filled the arena, I couldn’t help worrying about my phone. The last message I saw as I tried everything to check the connection (including removing and replacing the battery and SIM card) said my SIM card wasn’t registered with the network. I wasn’t sure what that meant. I listened to the oppressive opening notes of The Imperial March, looked at the enormous image of Darth Vader staring at us from the massive screen behind the orchestra and began to worry that my phone had turned to the Dark Side.

As it happens, I was one of thousands of customers affected by a service outage. T-Mobile customers across the United States began having trouble with their service. I was one of the lucky ones — by the end of the concert, my service had returned. But some people are still experiencing problems with their phones.