A pedestrian walks past an AT&T office in New York.
Scott Mill | CNBC
The CEO of AT&T apologized Sunday for the widespread cellphone outage that disrupted service for thousands of customers, saying some accounts will receive credits to offset the incident.
“For the portion of consumer and small business customers most impacted by the outage, we are automatically applying a credit to their account to compensate them for the inconvenience experienced,” CEO John Stankey wrote in a letter to employees.
“We all know that our customers receive tremendous value and convenience for the nominal daily cost of our service, and that outages sometimes have enormous impacts on some subscribers that may be greater than the nominal value of the credit. For this reason, I believe that crediting customers for a full day of service is the right thing to do,” he continued. “Despite this business impact, I believe this approach is fully manageable while achieving our 2024 business goals and our stated financial guidance.”
Affected customers who pay upfront for their service will have “options” available to them, and the company is working with its mid-market and enterprise customers to address their concerns, Stankey said.
Last Thursday, tens of thousands of AT&T customers across the United States reported widespread service outages and were unable to use their phones without access to WiFi. According to Downdetector, a peak of outages began around 4 a.m. ET and peaked with approximately 74,000 incidents reported at 8:30 a.m. ET.
The outage raised concerns that the company had potentially been hit by a cyber attack, but an initial review of the incident found that it was caused “by the application and execution of an incorrect process used while working to expand our network,” Stankey said.
“Teams worked hard to successfully normalize the network around noon CT. No matter the timing, one thing is clear: We have failed many of our customers, including many of you and your families. For that, we apologize,” he said. “These challenges provide an opportunity to identify key lessons that will make us better, and I can tell you that we have already implemented changes to prevent what happened on Thursday.”
Once the company realized an outage had occurred, it prioritized restoring service to first responders and reconnecting remaining customers throughout the day. Stankey thanked staff for their efforts in handling customer complaints, communicating outage information and restoring service.