AT&T's response to nationwide outage

AT&T says it will give affected customers $5 each to compensate for last week’s cellphone network outage that left many without service for hours.
The Dallas-based company said on its website that customers will get the $5 credit on their account within two billing cycles. The credit does not apply to AT&T Business, prepaid service or Cricket, its low-cost wireless service. AT&T said prepaid customers will have options available to them if they were impacted, although it did not elaborate on what those options might be.

[@ryanestes7331]

15 years ago being the 5 dollar footlong is painful to hear

[@simpletube11]

FIVE. Five dollar. Five dollar footloooong. ANY ANY ANY! That commercial is somehow ingrained in memory, but doesn’t quite top JG Wentworth

[@JaylaStarr]

I think about that almost daily at this point. Arby’s had a commercial where you would get two sandwiches for five bucks and I would always sing it… Recently, the commercial came on and it changed to six bucks. 😭

[@AutisticTeddyBear]

Yeah….I feel old now😭

[@ClanWiE]

Felt that one fr

[@yeeterdeleter0117]

​@@JaylaStarrI think ONE sandwich is six bucks bow

[@hey_thatsmyname]

The slightly perplexed caressing of the wall is what sold me on this bit.

[@ThaChickenMan]

“Shhhhhhh we still remember you”

[@alexanderwestphal9777]

The bit is garbage to present misinformation

[@cfb36]

@@alexanderwestphal9777what do you mean?

[@ginathecookie]

Same and I'm an Older Gen Z who knows what they are and have used them before for many years. Actually last time I used one was 2015? After that I moved out and it was an extra expense so never got one.

[@NickH-o5l]

all this happended cuz there was some nasty solar weather that day. I'm not making this up, NOAA and NASA both have space weather things going, and same for weather.gov

[@lilmanonurback1337]

And the $5 is for the people to split, not per person

[@matiassepulveda4455]

So…one Zimbabwe dollar.

[@audible_]

Yeah lmao "here you each get a billionths of a cent don't spend it all in one place now!"

[@LuizAlexPhoenix]

​@@audible_ "Go get something fancy, boyos and gals" **Drives away in a Ford T**

[@eeeeee8762]

Can't even get something nice...

[@nemasis119]

😆😅😂🤣

[@Mcpcwby67]

When Verizon had outages you got crickets and….” We’re working on it” Oh and a rate increase

[@emma70707]

Weirdly my Verizon 5G went out at the same time here in Seattle. I had LTE but it makes me think they were sharing infrastructure. Or a super weird coincidence.

[@kevincervantes4783]

@@emma70707they use the same type of towers idk how it could affect it but never know 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@AccidentalNinja]

How are they going to pay for the repair without a rate increase?...

[@raynitaylor1912]

​@@AccidentalNinja you mean recuperate lost capital. Plus, they technically didn't give a service already paid for (even if it was temporary).

[@TheDarkMaster312]

Everyone got a rate increase across all carriers, you aren't special.

[@dtamre93]

I work for the sheriff at their Dispatch center and that day I didn’t work but I heard a BUNCH of people called 911 to see if 911 still worked or to ask when their phones will work again…. 🤦

[@spottedtime]

The worst part, is when people actually needed the sheriff for any reason and they probably couldn’t get through, within a reasonable amount of time. This is one reason why 911 call centers hate butt dialers because real emergencies can’t get through on time, due to that those call centers don’t know if someone accidentally called them or if it was a real emergency. Actually, I heard that some states actually punish those that accidentally call 911, which I’m assuming is a fine or a short jail time.

[@dtamre93]

@@spottedtime if you accidentally call 911 PLEASE stay on the line and tell them… because if you hang up then we have to send units out to the address that pops up and it isn’t always correct. where if you tell them it was an accident then EVERYONE is happy

[@MVPMTKING]

​@@dtamre93 yepp happened to me once as a teen, pocket dialed them and had to prove it wasn't an emergency lol.

[@polocatfan]

​calling 911 in what can definitely be considered a state of emergency is valid. @@spottedtime

[@AJJUICE]

I was so confused when this happened. I thought my phone was just messed up. But when I connected to my home wifi it was working fine

[@mathieu6965]

That’s because of how Wi-Fi calling works. It doesn’t actually connect to the network and it works off of a different protocol.

[@upstandingj]

Thank you for explaining, nobody knew that’s how it worked

[@bmo14lax]

Yeah i barely noticed Because android got VOIP and wifi messaging. I noticed like 3 hours into the day it said "emergency calls only" but i was still chatting fine.

[@Jrookus]

Literally, it didn’t mess me up that much

[@crazyrobots6565]

In Canada we had an outage about 1 year ago (maybe close to two?) Where cell phones and wifi, satellite and cable were disrupted. People had literally nothing to do for a day.

[@iLoveEmilia]

I was in Mexico at the time, service was fine but as soon as I came back to the US I get a text from att regarding a compensation I didn’t even get affected by lol

[@DeerJerky]

oh that's funny, we have the exact opposite situation where we lost service and only got the "Oops! Our bad!" text without compensation lol

[@seantaggart7382]

Same I thought it was a scam

[@theoutlook55]

Nice. How was Mexico?

[@kelseycarlson9696]

Same, as in I wasn't affected but I got the message.

[@Samookely]

where’d you go in mexico if you dont mind sharing?

[@northernskys]

Similar thing happened here in Australia. Optus, our 2nd biggest carrier, had an outage that lasted in some places, up to 12 hours, which also affected our emergency services calls. That too was a "software problem" where one of their processing units went into overload, and broke the whole network. They only offered compensation to affected businesses, not the "common people"......

[@shadowman21282]

yeah, my first though was that we had our own "software glitch" recently too

[@Rhov9]

Man, that’s some real bs! If they literally interrupted people’s ability to call 911 then they KNOW they owe people more than platitudes. It’s just unacceptable, no matter which carrier in which country we’re talking about.

[@jofisk]

I was thinking the same thing.

[@conninator2000]

Same thing happened in canada a while back where one of the two/three major comm companies were shut down for a day. Except you couldn't even use home wifi - everything was down basically. All they got was a slap on the wrist. Crazy that we actually let modern day essential communications be run by oligopolies. Nationalizing those sectors would go a long way towards reliability, affordability, and accountability

[@Tutty628]

As much as I'm not going to defend a major corporation, the "no compensation" thing is straight cap, every Optus customer got 20GB a month extra on their data for 6 months which is pretty significant

[@sheerechoes]

Funnily enough a similar thing happened with a major provider in Australia just a couple of months ago

[@matthewcheng4158]

Sound like it's common issue. It happened last year in Toronto Canada, Our government took action demanding backup system for next time it happens

[@ittimjones]

I brainstormed with some other network engineers. The official statement didn't say the word "coding" but it did allude to the idea that they were adding and configuring hardware. So, it's highly likely that a DNS configuration error was the cause. In general terms, someone made a mistake during a setting change.

[@liloreoinya]

5 bucks. 😂

[@Animatron11]

You guys make my day with these shorts, no matter the topic. Keep it up! ❤😆

[@YD_.]

Funnily enough, I use AT&T and I didn’t even know there was an outage at the time because it still worked for me.

[@Shunbound]

The fact that most people rely on a private company to acces emergency services should be alarming.

[@CosRacecar]

Phones lines in the US have always been generally private. There may be some areas with public phone service, but I'm not aware of them. Be it landline, cellular, satellite, or VoIP, all are private companies.

[@truckerdave8465]

In fact the government had to split Ma Bell (aka Bell System, then Southwestern Bell, which became AT&T) up though antitrust suits to keep it from being a monopoly.

[@Tha_Trigga]

That subway line was killer!!!!!! 😅

[@TheShadowwalker007]

There is a lot of these massive outages going around from errors. I’m in Australia 🇦🇺 and we just had our second biggest company have a comple at outage (I think it was for 12hours?).

[@chicken]

The lack of communication during the outage was unacceptable, especially for such a large company. The compensation offered was minimal and not enough for the inconvenience caused.

[@cracgor]

It's always bugged me that when service goes out with internet, phones, TV, etc we still have to pay for that time the service was out.

[@ginathecookie]

This is insane. When we have outages here, companies usually apologize and reach who they can ASAP as well as keep updated AND we can still call 000 (our 911) without service. We also have payphones that double as wifi hubs. Once for after a really bad outage, my service provider gave us unlimited credit/data for a whole 24 hours. For everyone, even the ones not affected. (It was human error for the outage is why.) The providers here aren't perfect but this feels like should be the bare minimum; actual communication and access to emergency services.

[@ginathecookie]

Ah also 000 is called triple zero when talking about it often. But numbers when typing/writing it out.

[@djaketech4460]

When pointing at the landline, he's holding a grey cable, but it's not a 2pin or 4pin. It's an 8pin. So most likely a CAT5E cable. Which for those that don't know CAT5E is for ethernet connections not landlines Did they not think we would notice that?

[@thenonkiller2999]

I was without cellular service at school for around 5 - 6 hours. School was boring during that time, but luckily I was using my school Chromebook so I didn’t need to use my phone’s cellular data for my personal laptop that day.

[@carrotcrow13]

My buddy works for the companies doing their towers. He heard some asshole was digging where they shouldn't have been digging. Hit a fiber line for a hub.

[@truckerdave8465]

That doesn’t make sense because I had service while my kid didn’t. Same account, same everything.

[@carrotcrow13]

@@truckerdave8465 🤷‍♂️ just forwarding what he told me. The fiber line for a main hub in the region was hit while digging.

[@emg910728]

Shout out to the technician who placed that AT&T Branded Jack. Clean work. And an old Uverse TV coax too. The fact there is nothing plugged into the jack means, I hope, this customer has fiber service now.

[@kiwipomegranate]

My 14 year old cousin was at IKEA with his family when this happened. They were panicking so hard but he barely even noticed, he went to the food court and got food while he waited while his parents were frantically searching for him lmaoo. This dudes going places, probably the food court.

[@Dinky-Ayulo]

The fact that some people dont know what a landline is terrifies me.

[@jesseallanrozell]

I used to work for a major cellphone company. There are consequences for applying too many adjustments to an account. We were highly encouraged to prorate service outages. Monthly service cost divided by each phone divided by the number of hours in a month equals how much paid per hour to each phone impacted

[@milktea2422]

It’s so crazy that they had those $5 footlong commercials like 10 years ago. I’m only 20 but internet culture really boomed 10 years ago with literally everybody getting internet.

[@beccalife275]

The problem is also newer house not really having ports

[@KiroHeart]

Tmobile had this happen, they said “our service is down sorry” Edit;Omg 20 likes? Look mom I’m famous

[@jackmarshall9258]

Love how he called out subway for that. Subway: We're bringing back the $6 foot long. Random person: It was $5.

[@GimmeurPotato21]

it was more like 7 years ago. i was old enough to at least remember the jingle

[@Anticlimaxers]

We recently had a huge service outage in Australia with one of our major providers. They didn't even give us money, just a few more gigabytes of data the next month.

[@captianamyrica8622]

Man it affected everyone but me in my school

[@Cheeta246]

I had a suspicion it was solar flares since they had already said they were going happen more frequently this year. It really is a ridiculous tiny thing to offer. I don’t have a landline and only because my home is old and none is installed.

[@mattclarke3839]

Happened recently with Optus in Australia, and it was Australia wide, couldn't even call 000 either

[@tcam52]

i think the chaos part was overplayed. my whole family has At&T and we all had the outage and we were fine. never saw anyone complain or worry about it all day

[@paireon3419]

That "they can buy a footlong at Subway" had me at first, ngl

[@unclerat2131]

I didn't know about the outage until it was over. Four days later.

[@jamiecrawley1752]

This Sounds like the Optus outage in Australia late last year. They offered data as compensation, when no one was using the data that already came with their plan.

[@Aceacebabe]

Our work uses AT & T. It was down the whole day. It was a long day.

[@SoulMist17]

At least this wasn’t the day long outage of Optus in Australia.

[@bizijr]

I always wondered what that thing in the wall was.

[@demiraichan]

Sooo ignoring the fact that at&t just tried to pull ALL services in CA because of how out of date their lines are-att is the landline system most ppl in the state still have too. Also the $5 is still too much for them to do .

[@clarehidalgo]

California is straight up suing AT&T now over not maintaining the infrastructure for landlines due to safety reasons. They sneakily switched my family's landline with an internet phone a few years back when we had an issue. They had merged my mom's and her ex-boyfriend's AT&T accounts even though they had been separate and he never paid for our landline because AT&T assumed because they had the same address it should all be under the man when my mom owns the house and refused to fix their mistake and refused to let us keep our phone number. so we switched to Comcast for like 3 months because they said we could keep our phone number, and then my mom switch back to AT&T and we could magically keep our phone number when moving from Comcast but not to a new AT&T account because the dumb shits merged the accounts behind our backs. Anyway when we requested a landline they gave us a internet phone and when I told my mom "this isn't a landline, it is plugged into our router, it won't work if the power is out" she called them and they said "We, don't allow new landline connections anymore because we let the copper wire degrade, we only keep currently connected landline phones all the rest are internet phones now." I'm still pissed, hope California kicks their asses

[@Snek_1000]

My European brain cannot comprehend why people would dial 911 because they have no cell service. Unbelievable

[@clarehidalgo]

For like reasons phones in the US are legally required to be able to call 911 when they have no signal it say "No connection, emergency calls only" when my phone has no signal. Don't know why they are calling 911 over it since that feature is for emergencies

[@RussianSevereWeatherVideos]

How did this outage affect 911 calling when you can dial that number even without a SIM card or coverage?

[@clarehidalgo]

Because dumb people started spamming 911 to ask why their phones weren't working

[@MadmanLink]

Same thing happened here in Canada. Rogers which one of our biggest carriers went down. It disrupted cell, internet and even our debit system.

[@h2ojr1]

15 YEARS?! oh god, I can suddenly feel my bones touching

[@RiannaPeterson]

15 years ag o i was babiy

[@zacharycrago2753]

1.7 million? a bit conservative.. I started the morning of the outage in Baltimore MD.. went all the way back to Columbus, OH.. everywhere we stopped along the way people were stopping and asking what was up with cell phones

[@junipre985]

same thing happened to rogers in canada last year

[@wamrainc176]

I still have landline in my house the wireless ones and there’s one in the basement old-fashioned one hanging on the wall because while my friends laugh at me, that’s gonna be a lifesaver one day when God forbid there is no cell reception no Wi-Fi

[@justme5384]

In Finland ypu don't even need a sim card to dial 112, our equivalent of your 911. Even if you have a sim and you're out of service it will use any available operator to dial

[@deeorrown8420]

It was a CME from the sun. Hundreds of companies went off line.

[@Larunda]

Sounds like the Optus outage in Australia 👀 Except customers only got extra data. No bill savings

[@earlcollier4119]

Canada already had that a couple years ago

[@Ugotnobalz]

$5 for my family plan of 6 phones that were affected, so blessed 🥰

[@That_girl_bby2245]

I'm a blue collar worker and I had to be careful that I didn't go anywhere alone or do anything dangerous that day because I didn't have any service to call for help if needed.

[@Blewlongmun]

I’m not grateful for a lot of my obsessions as a child but my phase of trying to be “cultured” really paid off in the generational game. I’m aware of landlines, Pogs, Limewire, and Skibbidi toilet, I’ve surpassed mere age.

[@newtechnoblade]

I noticed it but, had school in the morning so it really didn't affect me.

[@SuperParkourio]

12 inches? Wow! That's 6 inches per person!

[@Howl4514]

Whats funny is that my grandmother was trying to get a landline last year because she hates cell phones. My mother and i had to jump through hoops because so many claimed that they didnt do traditional landlines.

[@MountainPearls]

Fun fact: If you have an “old phone” you can plug it into any landline to call 911…regardless whether you pay for the line (assuming it is hooked up to utilities). I haven’t lived in a place with landlines in almost a decade, though.

[@teebob21]

This does NOT work on disconnected landlines.

[@kingurameshi2183]

It was out for a couple hours tops and you could still make 911 calls. They don’t owe anybody anything.

[@DepressExpressedRR]

Ok, so from someone who is able to find stuff out from the company, as my family has someone who works there…it was an update to the tower’s recognition of, essentially a subscriber’s identification. And so it saw everyone, as just some random number, instead of a specific individual in their system. Also 911 should have still gone through, unless in the area they shut off the tower to try to diagnose it, as 911 EMERGENCY calls force their way through the tower.

[@DepressExpressedRR]

Also the amount of payment and reimbursement, is like that, as the amount of time of payed service, lost in that time…was essentially worth 5 dollars if that time was specifically payed for.

[@DembaiVT]

This happened in Canada. Feels like...code might be coming from outside the company.

[@simonabunker]

We haven't had a landline in years!

[@no1bandfan]

This never would have happened to BellSouth.

[@ImPotao]

I didn't even know outage happened until I got a text from AT&t. It barely affected me, I only had it for like 5 minutes during my lunch break. And I was using data the whole day.

[@ChapterGrim]

No fines?

[@FrozenInPain]

AT&T first reported that it only affected 70,000 people fyi 💀💀

[@AngelaCSpears]

AT&T is refusing to transfer landlines to spouses if one of the couple dirs and haven't been allowing them to be sold here in Michigan. You can't use a service that is getting phased out. This isn't the first or last time there will be such an outage. ;_;

[@SupaSillyMexi]

The ironic thing is AT&T does not want to service the landlines in rural areas anymore and wont put In new lines so its not an option in many areas

[@novaiscool1]

I was honestly expecting something like "5 free calls and texts for all customers affected"

[@mistgocrazy6587]

Tbf 95% of people were probably just slightly inconvenienced when they couldn’t look up how many spines a spinosaurus has

[@hudsonator7259]

I never noticed this, got the text and was never affected. Since it was a Thursday, i was probably just in school at the time

[@thefbiman2116]

Worst part is they'll probably make it only accessible through the call center, refuse to tell the employees how to do it and make you yell at the one person who had nothing to do with it while they don't even give you what you were promised. Welcome to the telecom industry, but you Earthlings know it as Hell

[@JurassicJosh341]

Reminder that several other services were out at the time (even epic games so that’s how you know it was bad) and that solar flares are really bad rn. We even had a class X take out all radio in South America and Africa for awhile 2 weeks ago.

[@jamesnoneyabizness5611]

"AT&T gross profit for the twelve months ending December 31, 2023 was $72.305B, a 3.45% increase year-over-year." That is all.

[@a_a-lf6uu]

Problem is new landlines are just internet connected phones

[@DarthPoyner]

I didn't even know there was an outage. Maybe put down the phones once in a while?

[@ashleymorgan7652]

A Verizon/straight talk tower went down near me either this school year or last school year. Only way to call anyone was iPhones on wifi or Facebook messenger on wifi for androids. Went on for atleast two days. Oddest time in my life

[@onyxfrench-king611]

A friend of mine’s dad literally died because of that outage.

[@b0wking119]

I had service the entire time

[@coolguy5133]

So this doesn't have anything to do with the attack on the Batman Tower (AT&T Tower)?

[@DrinkWater2244]

I just looked it up to make sure i wasnt tripping but you can call 911 even without service i dont really kmow or care what this outage was about but you most likely could still call 911 if you needed to

[@Crlarl]

1.7 million is nothing. The Rogers outage in 2022 affected 12 million.

[@Alucard-gt1zf]

I thought 999 calls routed through literally every single service, even military ones, How many places in america and only servoced by one company? That seems wild

[@hailthequeenFM]

I also thought it was landline and not LAN line.

[@OverdaleRd]

Something really similar happened to Rogers in Canada a little while ago

[@MerpSquirrel]

Most places don’t even offer copper landlines anymore. Can’t get one at my house.

[@clarehidalgo]

Yeah, they sneakily switch my mom to an Internet phone from a landline because they weren't maintaining the copper wires. Now, the State of California is suing them for not maintaining the copper wires

[@alowitiousmckay5563]

That makes no sense. ANY carrier's antennas will relay a 911 call. If AT&T's antennas are down on a tower, it will bounce it to the nearest working antenna array, no matter who the carrier is. That is federal law.

[@matthewrosas5668]

This is why I've been with T-Mobile for over 5 years

[@lizziecross8149]

I got an apology text from them, but I had no clue it had even happened. I didn’t realize it was such a big deal

[@limeanimates]

Wow... this sounds awfully familiar... *optus outage*

[@Goob13289]

Necessities shouldn’t be commercialized

[@joshymcdaniel9233]

few years back a fiber optic cable was cut when installing pipe it wiped out internet providers Every cell carrier in my area and all landlines for 36 hours Insane to think 1 cut/damaged wire can disable all communications!

[@clarehidalgo]

AT&T is straight up refusing to maintain the wires used by landline phones and California is suing them over it

[@brandonlong7866]

Yeah, they clean five dollars is the estimated cost of service for one day. SMH. That really sucked. Unfortunately I’m kind of stuck with AT&T for the next 30 months.

[@ZachyDevello]

Why does this sound like Optus here is Australia recently... This is exactly what happened!

[@thewittyusername]

I had no idea this happened and got a text saying "we are so sorry, k bye" lol

[@TurtleHydra]

I was stuck at work for that entire time and I normally use my phone to kill time. It was a very long 8 hours : (

[@getutill]

Was I the only one who immediately checked to make sure the bill was paid that morning when we woke up to no service? 😅

[@ValensBellator]

Only the 1.7 million? Seems like it was higher based on how wide spread the issue was.