New York’s top law enforcement officer has launched an investigation into a massive wireless network outage that left AT&T customers unable to use their mobile devices last month.
On Thursday, New York State Attorney General Letitia James said her office has opened a probe into the cause of the outage as well as AT&T’s response to the issue.
“Americans rely on cell service providers for consistent and reliable service to help them with nearly every aspect of their daily lives,” James said in a statement. “Nationwide outages are not just an inconvenience, they can be dangerous, and it’s critical that we protect consumers when an outage occurs. I encourage any New Yorker who was affected by this disruption to file a complaint with my office.”
The incident happened on February 22 when millions of customers across the country were unable to make phone calls or use wireless data on AT&T’s 4G LTE and 5G networks. The issue affected nearly all AT&T customers, including small businesses, first responders and government subscribers.
During the outage, there was rampant speculation that the issue was caused by a cyberattack, something AT&T later denied. Instead, the cause of the outage was traced to an errant software update during routine maintenance and upgrades to AT&T’s 5G network, an issue that cascaded throughout the company’s service footprint.
Executives with AT&T later apologized for the issue, and offered some customers a $5 bill credit if they were impacted. Eligible customers who will automatically receive the credit include those with post-paid consumer and small business lines. AT&T said prepaid phone users would not automatically receive the credit, but affirmed the company might extend a credit to some subscribers on a case-by-case basis if they can demonstrate they were impacted by the issue.
AT&T has over 200 prepaid and postpaid wireless lines.
