Strange Sprint service outage today

[xxxjdoggxxx]

I was at work tonight and a coworker who also has Sprint told me that he was not able to make any calls (busy signal when trying to make calls, data and text messages still worked). So I tried to make a call on my phone and had the same thing happen. So after me and him talking to other people we know who have Sprint everyone said they had the same problem (even people an hour away from where we were). I then tried to call Sprint customer service from a separate land-line and got a busy signal. I then called the Nextel customer service and got through and after sitting on hold and talking to a few people who had no idea what was going on I talked to a tech who said they were having problems with a few towers and service would be back in a few hours.

Finally after waiting over 2 hours I was able to make calls again. I have a few questions about this situation for those who might be knowledgeable enough to answer. First of all what type of problem would cause me to get a busy signal when I try to make calls but yet my data and text messages would still work? Secondly why would people I know over an hour away from where I was be having the same problem if it was only a few towers with problems as the tech told me? Another question would be did anyone on this website have the same problem tonight (if so please tell me where you were when it happened)? Also would it be reasonable for me to call Sprint and ask for some sort of credit to my account for the in inconvenience of not having phone service?

I found this to be strange as I have had Sprint service for almost 2 years now and have never had this happen. If anyone out there has technical knowledge of how the cell networks work I would be interested in reading your take on what happened.

[drewcam888]

Simply put there was a network crash in a given area. So you were without service with the network down. I doubt you will be any credit because they would prorate it for the outage, so 2 hours down out of approx 720 in a month. You would get like 0.3% credit which is a few cents. Not worth the time of the phone call.