#Socialites, do you think it’s enough? After last week’s massive outage, AT&T, a telecommunications giant serving over 100 million customers, is attempting to “make things right” by offering a $5 credit to their customers’ accounts.
As we previously shared, and some even experienced, in the early hours of Thursday (February 22), thousands of AT&T customers woke up without any service, and the massive outage sent shockwaves across social media.
Several were left frustrated and stranded as the network outage disrupted their ability to make calls, send texts, and access the internet. It was also reported that the outage had a rippling effect that also affected some Verizon and T-Mobile customers.
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At the time, DownDetector reported that over 31,000 AT&T customers voiced their outage concerns, with numbers peaking in the early hours of the morning (around 4 a.m. EST) and resurging hours later (around 11 a.m. EST). Despite all of the widespread disruptions and thousands of customers slamming the telecommunications company online, AT&T remained quiet for hours on hours.
Eventually, the company spoke out and issued a statement advising customers to utilize Wi-Fi calling until service is fully restored. An AT&T spokesperson told ABC News, “Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”
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As the morning progressed, AT&T provided an update stating that 75% of its network had been restored. Despite the progress, the remaining customers were still experiencing service interruptions, highlighting the urgency of the situation. The spokesperson added, “Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. Our network teams took immediate action and so far three-quarters of our network has been restored. We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers.”
By 3:10 p.m. EST on Thursday, AT&T said the problem had been resolved. The company said, “We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them. Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future.”
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Later that day, it was reported that U.S. and federal agencies (FCC and FBI) had launched an investigation into the massive AT&T outage, as many customers and officials were left believing the outage was the result of a cyber attack. However, the company, itself, stressed that the outage wasn’t the result of such an attack.
Since the investigation launch, AT&T has now announced that they are offering $5 credits to those affected by the widespread outage. In a statement on Saturday (February 24), AT&T said, “We apologize for Thursday’s network outage. We recognize the frustration this outage has caused and know we let many of our customers down.”
The statement continued, “To help make it right, we’re reaching out to potentially impacted customers and we’re automatically applying a credit to their accounts. We want to reassure our customers of our commitment to reliably connect them – anytime and anywhere.” AT&T said that the credit, which they claim is “the average cost of a full day of service,” will typically be applied within two bill cycles and does not apply to AT&T Business, AT&T Prepaid or Cricket.
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