AT&T has a new “Guarantee” for its wireless and fiber customers: If their network goes down, you won't be billed for service that day. The new initiative, which will go live on January 9, will begin “for fiber customers who have 20 minutes or more and wireless customers who have a covered outage of 60 minutes or more.”
According to AT&T, a “covered outage” for a carrier means “a wireless outage lasting 60 minutes or more caused by a single incident that hits 10 or more towers.” In any case, AT&T says that if there is an outage, it will automatically apply a bill credit to affected customers to “equal to a full day of service.” For wireless customers, the carrier says it will be a credit for each affected line, not just the bill.
For small business customers, the operator says it will “reach out” and offer “options to help straighten it out.”
The new offer comes after AT&T had a rough 2024. Last February, the company there was a big break which threw off coverage for many, later offering a $5 account credit as an apology. In June users on its network had problems making calls while in August some iOS users on AT&T had their phones stuck in SOS mode.
AT&T's new promise is the latest from a service provider to refund customers for service issues. Last year Charter's Spectrum has introduced a similar offer for its home internet customerspromising a full day's worth of credit if there were problems in the neighborhood that lasted more than two hours (and weren't caused by “power outages, natural disasters and scheduled overnight maintenance”).