AT&T will give customers affected by the Feb. 22 nationwide outage in its cellular service a $5 credit to their accounts, according to The Dallas Morning News.
In a statement on Feb. 24, the Dallas-based telecommunications giant apologized for the outage.
“We recognize the frustration this outage caused and know we let many of our customers down,” company officials wrote on AT&T’s website. “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.”
Google Trends data analysis revealed the states most affected by the outage. Arkansas was the most impacted, experiencing the highest search interest score of 495 out of 600. Kentucky ranked second, with residents searching “ATT SOS” more than any other state. West Virginia, Louisiana, and Indiana rounded out the top five states with the most significant outage issues.
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$5 credit—equivalent to the average cost of a full day of cellular service—will be applied to AT&T Wireless accounts and typically within two bill cycles. However, note that the credit does not extend to AT&T Business, AT&T Prepaid, or Cricket.The outage, which began around 2 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 22, prompted more than 73,000 customers to report cellular outages by 8:15 a.m., as tracked by Downdetector.com. The disruption also impacted FirstNet, AT&T’s emergency response network.
AT&T fully restored wireless service to all customers by 2 p.m. the same day.
“It’s not only frustrating when cell service goes down, but also potentially dangerous,” said Mason Jones, marketing director for NoDepositRewards.com. “When an outage like this happens, users may be unable to reach emergency services, which can cause chaos.”
Some attributed the cause of the outage to solar flares, but AT&T said the incident resulted from an error in coding during the expansion of its network, and ruled out a cyberattack.
AT&T said steps are being taken to prevent such incidents in the future, although specific details were not provided.
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