It wasn't just Mass that was effected. From a local news channel here in Maine "We're being told that an AT&T outage is occurring throughout Maine and parts of New Hampshire due to a technical issue out of Mass. We'll let you know when we know more." At the same time, my local channels out of Portland were not available on DirecTV, and my internet ping times to a server in Portland jumped to over 350. Everything is back to normal, my local channels are back on DirecTV. Pings are normal, and the AT&T service mentioned is back on also.. That effected both wireless and land line provided by them. (Thankfully I don't use AT&T) I am not sure any oof this is relevant to what you had, but it seems to be a good coincidence if it isn't.
There was definitely some major issue yesterday. I heard from our telco guys that DSCI (CLEC) couldn't route our inbound calls, so any one calling our direct lines would not get through, though the 800#s were getting through to the switchboard.