AT&T’s wireless service was hit with a nationwide cellular outage on February 22 impacting all who are using their service. The power outage was quickly repaired within the same day at around 3 P.M. Eastern time.
AT&T was able to speak on the matter apologizing for the inconvenience for all the customers affected.
"We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers," AT&T said in a statement. "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."
AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon saw some surges in their connections through Downdetector as well, a tracking site used by all three companies, but AT&T was the only service heavily affected.
A spokesman for Verizon spoke up to talk about their issues and told NBC News that they did not see any issues with their connections and believe the issues came from the other carriers. Verizon customers said the same thing and are only having issues when trying to call people using the other two affiliated carriers.
T-Mobile also said their customers are not experiencing issues of any sort except when trying to make a phone call to people using AT&T. Downdetector is likely "reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks."
The power outage caused lots of concern for everyone involved around the country as customers claimed they weren’t able to call 911 because of the lack of service. The power outage was so strong; schools lost Wi-Fi connections and were not able to use any of their computers.
“I was sitting in school on that Thursday and I tried looking something up on google and all of a sudden my phone just stopped working. I got really confused and then I saw on the top right corner where it would normally say “5G” it said “SOS” and that’s when I knew something was up” NHS Senior Connor Muir said.
Muir uses AT&T everyday as well as his whole family so the power outage definitely affected his day and the rest of his family’s too.
AT&T workers were sincere and apologetic after the commotion caused by their servers. Even though the power outages only lasted around 5 hours, the company still took all the blame.
“No matter the timing, one thing is clear — we let down many of our customers, including many of you and your families,” the chief executive of AT&T, John T. Stankey, wrote in a letter dated Sunday. “For that, we apologize.”
To “make things right” for all the customers, AT&T made a statement claiming they will be adding $5 to everyone's account who was impacted by the power outage.
“For the portion of consumer and small business customers most impacted by the outage, we are automatically applying an account credit to compensate them for the inconvenience they experienced,” the company said.
“I guess I am somewhat happy about the $5 AT&T is giving out to everyone impacted but I think it is a bit unnecessary just because of the time it lasted. My phone was only off for about 3-4 hours so I think the company giving away $5 to that amount of people is slightly unproportionate but it does show ownership and that they care about their customers,” NHS Junior Jayden Taylor said.
Taylor believes that it is a bit out of proportion the way they are sending their apologies but he does appreciate the way they care for their customers.
It will take around two to three billing cycles for the money to be added to their accounts but regardless of the wait, the money will be there.