AT&T, following last year's embarrassing botched update that kicked every device off its wireless network and blocked over 92 million phone calls, is now promising full-day bill credits to mobile customers for future outages that last at least 60 minutes and meet certain other criteria. A similar promise is being made to fiber customers for unplanned outages lasting at least 20 minutes, but only if the customer uses an AT&T-provided gateway.

The "AT&T Guarantee" announced today has caveats that can make it possible for a disruption to not be covered. AT&T says the promised mobile bill credits are "for wireless downtime lasting 60 minutes or more caused by a single incident impacting 10 or more towers."

The full-day bill credits do not include a prorated amount for the taxes and fees imposed on a monthly bill. The "bill credit will be calculated using the daily rate customer is charged for wireless service only (excludes taxes, fees, device payments, and any add-on services," AT&T said. If an outage lasts more than 24 hours, a customer will receive another full-day bill credit for each additional day.

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It is part of an effort by the company to improve its customer service.

An AT&T customer who switched to the company's FirstNet service for first responders got quite the shock when his bill came in at $6,223.60, instead of the roughly $260 that his four-line plan previously cost each month.

The Texas man described his experience in a now-deleted Reddit post three days ago, saying he hadn't been able to get the obviously incorrect bill reversed despite calling AT&T and going to an AT&T store in Dallas. The case drew plenty of attention and the bill was finally wiped out several days after the customer contacted the AT&T president's office.

The customer said he received the billing email on December 11. An automatic payment was scheduled for December 15, but he canceled the autopay before the money was charged. The whole mess took a week to straighten out.

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AT&T and Verizon reportedly are not notifying most customers whose call records were stolen in the ongoing attack attributed to Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon. NBC News reported today that "the vast majority of people whose call records have been stolen by Chinese hackers have not been notified, according to industry sources, and there is no indication that most affected people will be notified in the near future."

US government officials said last week that major telecom companies have been unable to fully evict the Chinese state-sponsored hackers from their networks. There have been direct notifications to specific targets, such as government officials, whose calls were listened to and whose text messages were accessed. "President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance, senior congressional staffers and an array of US security officials were among scores of individuals to have their calls and texts directly targeted," The Wall Street Journal wrote.

For most other victims, the data accessed apparently didn't include the contents of communications. It instead consisted of metadata like the numbers that phones called and when. These people are not receiving notifications from carriers, NBC News wrote today:

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AT&T this week detailed plans to eliminate copper phone and DSL lines from its network while leaving many customers in rural areas with only wireless or satellite as an alternative.

In a presentation for analysts and investors on Tuesday, AT&T said it has a "wireless first" plan for 50 percent of its 500,000-square-mile wireline territory and a "fiber first" plan for the rest. The more sparsely populated half accounts for 10 percent of the potential customer base, and AT&T does not plan to build fiber home Internet for those users.

AT&T said it expects to be able to ditch copper because of state-level deregulation and the impending shift in power at the Federal Communications Commission, where Trump pick Brendan Carr is set to become the chairman. California is the only state out of 21 in AT&T's wireline territory that hasn't yet granted AT&T's request for deregulation of old networks.

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America's aging infrastructure seems to be the culprit.