AT&T has announced a plan to provide customers who experienced a disruption in service during last week’s mass outage a $5 credit that will automatically be applied to their bills within two billing cycles.
“We apologize for Thursday’s network outage. We recognize the frustration this outage has caused and know we let many of our customers down,” a statement on AT&T’s website reads. “We understand this may have impacted their ability to connect with family, friends, and others. Small business owners may have been impacted, potentially disrupting an essential way they connect with customers.”
The service interruption occurred on February 22, with the first customer reports of service disruption happening around 3:30 a.m. CT. The outage affected cell service to AT&T customers and Cricket Wireless customers. However, it potentially impacted several other carriers, though the issues appear to have mostly been the inability of T-Mobile, Verizon, and other carrier customers to reach AT&T customers. The outage was largely resolved Thursday afternoon, and AT&T reported that all services had been restored at 2:10 p.m. CT.
The cause of the outage was purportedly traced to a service update that did not execute correctly. Initial fears that the AT&T network was a victim of hackers proved false, though the outage did spark investigations from numerous government agencies, as reported by The Dallas Express.
AT&T arrived at the $5 figure by reasoning that the value equates to the average cost of one day of cell service, according to reporting by The Dallas Morning News. It will apply only to individual plans and is not available to AT&T Business, AT&T Prepaid, or Cricket Wireless customers. AT&T owns Cricket Wireless.
The total cost of the credit to AT&T has not been released, but the website DownDetector.com showed the peak of outages registering at more than 73,000.
A service outage map using data from DownDetector and published by CBS News shows that the hardest-hit area was Houston, which reported 24,321 customers without service. Dallas reported 19,778 outages. Cities on the East Coast and in the Northeast were also hit hard, while West Coast cities were less affected. Los Angeles reported only 5,600 outages.
The outage impacted many people, notably several 911 call centers that were overwhelmed as people called the emergency line to see if their phones were working. There were no reports of life-threatening emergencies caused by the outage.
A text message sent to a DX staffer Sunday afternoon read:
“It’s AT&T. We apologize for Thursday’s outage, which may have impacted you. As a valued customer, your connection matters, and we’re committed to doing better. To help make it right, we’re applying a credit to your account.”
