AT&T has offered a $5 bill credit to customers impacted by a major wireless services outage on Thursday. First quarter earnings for T stock are due April 24. The $5 AT&T credit will be applied within two billing cycles, AT&T said in a statement.
"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. We're crediting them for the average cost of a full day of service."
"We're also taking steps to prevent this from happening again in the future. Our priority is to continuously improve and be sure our customers stay connected," the AT&T statement added.
On the stock market today, T stock rose a fraction to 16.82.
The AT&T credit offer doesn't apply to AT&T business or prepaid customers or to Cricket subscribers. At least 75,000 customers were impacted, according to one report.
Letter To AT&T Employees
In a letter to employees on Sunday, AT&T Chief Executive John Stankey reiterated 2024 financial guidance.
"We all know that our customers receive tremendous value and convenience for the nominal daily cost of our service, and outages sometimes have outsized impacts on some subscribers that may be greater than the face value of the credit," Stankey said.
He added: "For that reason, I believe that crediting those customers for essentially a full day of service is the right thing to do. Despite that impact to the business, I believe this approach is fully manageable while achieving the 2024 business objectives we have set for ourselves and our stated financial guidance."
The company says the AT&T outage was caused by a network software upgrade, not a computer hacking attack as some had speculated.
T stock rose 1.3% to close at 16.80 on Friday after sliding 2.4% on Thursday. AT&T stock is about flat in 2024 after falling 9% last year.
AT&T Outage Not Caused by Cyberattack
In a statement late Thursday, the company said the AT&T outage was caused by "the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network."
Meanwhile, wireless service was restored to all AT&T customers late Thursday.
One analyst had speculated that there would be an AT&T credit offer.
"We haven't seen a major network outage affecting one of the big carriers in recent years," said Morgan Stanley analyst Simon Flannery in a report on Friday. "Rogers in Canada suffered a multiday wireless and wireline network outage in the summer of 2022. In that case, Rogers issued $150 million (in Canadian currency) in bill credits to customers."
As for the AT&T outage, Flannery added: "Overall, we could see some modest financial and operational impacts in the quarter, as well as potential regulatory investigations. But (we) expect that the overall long term impact should be immaterial assuming no recurrence of the outage."
Also, T stock holds a Relative Strength Rating of 50 out of a best possible 99. Also, T stock has formed a cup-with-handle base but is not actionable.
Follow Reinhardt Krause on X, formerly called Twitter, @reinhardtk_tech for updates on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and cloud computing.
