By Harshita Mary Varghese
(Reuters) - U.S. telecom giant AT&T (NYSE:T) said on Wednesday it would offer bill credits for network outages as part of a new initiative to attract customers, after the industry experienced several significant disruptions in 2024.
In February last year, AT&T faced a nationwide wireless service disruption that lasted more than 12 hours, blocking over 92 million calls and preventing over 25,000 attempts to contact the 911 emergency call line. In response, the company credited customers with a full day of service.
Customers of rival telecom companies, such as T-Mobile and Verizon (NYSE:VZ), also faced service disruptions, sparking widespread frustration and raising concerns about the reliability of critical communication infrastructure.
Under AT&T's latest initiative, AT&T Guarantee, fiber users who experience outages of 20 minutes or more, and wireless customers who face disruptions of 60 minutes or more of a covered outage, will automatically receive a bill credit equivalent to a full day of service.
"Four years ago, we were losing share in the industry for a significant period of time," Jenifer Robertson, executive vice president and GM, AT&T Mass Markets & Mobility, told Reuters.
"We knew we had lost our customers' trust," Robertson said, adding that AT&T responded with strategies such as pricing, product improvements and promotional offers to return the company to growth.
The initiative, which will be live from Thursday, is AT&T's guarantee to "make it right" for customers should the company fail to deliver on its promise of dependable connectivity, according to an AT&T statement.
For three years in a row, until 2023, AT&T had topped the customer satisfaction rankings for business wireless service among large enterprises, according to a survey by consulting firm J.D. Power.
"Since 2019, we've invested more than $140 billion in our network and almost a billion dollars in customer care and operations," Robertson said.