It seems like some sort of hardware/software rollout going wrong. We had similar outage last weekend in Japan with #3 service provider KDDI/AU, a 86 hour outage of both cell and data service. Lot of services like weather stations went offline, people were unable to reach/use emergency, banking, barcode/app based payment services. Some ATMs and Vending Machines went offline.

Mobile and data service has become quite embedded in daily life.