By Will Feuer


New York Attorney General Letitia James said she is investigating the recent cell service outage that hit thousands of AT&T customers last week.

"Americans rely on cell service providers for consistent and reliable service to help them with nearly every aspect of their daily lives," James said. "Nationwide outages are not just an inconvenience, they can be dangerous, and it's critical that we protect consumers when an outage occurs."

James encouraged affected New Yorkers to file a complaint with her office. James said her office will investigate the causes of the outage as well as AT&T's response.

AT&T has apologized for the incident, which left people around the country without cellphone service for hours. A company spokesman said last week that the outage was caused by "an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network," and that it wasn't the result of a cyberattack.

The White House, security agencies and regulators are also looking into what went wrong.

AT&T has offered a $5 billing credit to affected customers.


Write to Will Feuer at Will.Feuer@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

02-29-24 1236ET