AT&T Coding Error Caused Thursday's Outage; Refunds Offered

DALLAS, TX — AT&T will refund each of its customers $5 for the network outage on Thursday, the company said.

Thursday's outage of the AT&T Wireless network was not a cyberattack, but instead a coding error. After the hours long network outage was rectified early Thursday afternoon, AT&T issued a statement about the outage.

"Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack. We are continuing our assessment of today’s outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve," AT&T stated on their website.

The Dallas-based corporation went further Saturday and announced that every AT&T Wireless customer will receive a $5 credit each customer's statement.

"We apologize and recognize the frustration this outage has caused and know we let many of our customers down. To help make it right, we’re applying a credit for potentially impacted accounts to help reassure our customers of our commitment to reliably connect them – anytime and anywhere," stated AT&T on its website. It directed customers to a special webpage called "Make It Right."

The website DownDetector indicated that as many as 73,000 AT&T customers reported incidents. Other networks also reported outages although likely this was caused by phone customers from other carriers being unable to reach an AT&T Wireless customer's phone. AT&T Wireless is the country's largest cellular provider, with more than 240 million subscribers.

The refund offer has small print. "One $5 credit per account on your AT&T WirelessSM account. Offer does not apply to AT&T Business, AT&T Prepaid or Cricket. Bill credits will typically be applied within 2 bill cycles." Cricket is the no-frills, pre-paid version of AT&T Wireless.