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Comment by dhosek | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally, T-Mobile cellular internet slowed to a crawl in southern Illinois when the eclipse entered the partial stage and was flakey for about an hour afterwards.

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It's interesting that it was so closely tied to the actual eclipse. I'd have not expected that. I'd have expected people to be trying to make the most use of cellular while waiting for the eclipse. You've got all those people who travelled to it trying to keep themselves occupied while waiting.

I saw the 2017 eclipse near Madras, OR. That part of Oregon is mostly agricultural with scattered small towns every few miles. T-Mobile was close to useless from when I got there around noon the day before the eclipse to at least an hour after the eclipse.

An old friend that I hadn't seen in decades was in the same general area and we both had T-Mobile. We were trying to figure out if we could meet up, and I don't think we managed to get a single voice call to go through. SMS would occasionally go through albeit with an hour or more of lag.

Many more people taking photos and videos than usual, and sharing those photos and videos, as well as iCloud automated backup?

I assume friends/family calling/Facetiming to see or share the experience as well. Many traveled there and didn't have WiFi.

iCloud Backup generally happens at night when on Wi-Fi.

AT&T in SE Oklahoma was practically unusable as well. Ping times were 300-1000ms and packet loss was (didn't run ping for very long) probably 90+%. Loading a webpage just didn't work. Sending a WhatsApp text message worked if you were patient.

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