New York AG investigating AT&T nationwide outages

New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Thursday that she was launching an investigation into the nationwide AT&T service outage that affected about three-quarters of its customers.  

In a press release Thursday, James said her office will investigate the causes of and the company’s response to the outage and urged New Yorkers who were affected by it to file complaints with her office.

“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,” she added.

Her announcement comes one week after a nationwide outage disrupted millions of customers’ service.

In a press release Feb. 25, AT&T said that, based on an initial review, it has determined the outage was caused by “the application and execution of an incorrect process used while working to expand our network.”

AT&T said in the release that it will automatically credit each account affected by the outage with the cost of one day of service.

“We all know that our customers receive tremendous value and convenience for the nominal daily cost of our service, and outages sometimes have outsized impacts on some subscribers that may be greater than the face value of the credit,” AT&T wrote in the statement. “For that reason, I believe that crediting those customers for essentially a full day of service is the right thing to do.”

AT&T did not respond to an immediate request for comment from The Hill.