New outage guarantee aims to fix that

AT&T is trying to address one of the biggest frustrations for wireless phone and internet customers—losing service to outages and still paying for it.

Dallas-based telecom giant AT&T has heard the complaints and is launching a bill credit guarantee to stop customers from paying for service on days when they lose service for a significant amount of time.

“It’s no secret that the telecom space has, for a long time, been seen as an industry that does not put our customers first,” said Lynette Aguilar, vice president and general manager at AT&T. “That said, we have really been intentional and strategic to a path … to get us back to our core of who we are as a company.”

There are stipulations, of course. Qualifying wireless outages must be at least an hour long and fiber internet outages, 20 minutes. Outages out of AT&T’s control, like weather or natural disaster-related ones, as well as those stemming from hardware issues at your own home, are excluded.

For small business customers, bill credits are not automatic, but AT&T promises to reach out with options.

AT&T, one of the largest wireless and fiber internet providers in the country, says it is the first telecom company to offer this sort of guarantee to both wireless and fiber customers.

Verizon, for example, does not automatically credit wireless customers for outages. They must reach out to customer service first.

AT&T hopes its automatic guarantee will help customers feel taken care of during outages such as the one that knocked out cell service to much of the country for nearly half a day in early 2024.

The guarantee begins Thursday and includes existing wireless and fiber customers, as well as new customers.

“It’s really been about, if we’re going to be committed to our transformation to put our customers at the center of our business, what does that mean?” Aguilar said. “And that’s how we landed at, we’re going to make a guarantee and a commitment.”

The guarantee is in line with AT&T’s wider strategy under CEO John Stankey to refocus on its core wireless and fiber offerings.

In 2022, after a several-year foray into the media business, AT&T spun off WarnerMedia (which it bought as Time Warner in 2018), and it has since invested billions in its fiber and wireless networks.

The bet has so far paid off for AT&T. Its stock price closed at $23 in 2024, a greater than 25% increase over the course of the year.

2025 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.