AT&T Issues Statement About The Recent DirecTV Now Outage

AT&T has issued a clarification about the recent service interruption experienced by DirecTV Now customers. The issued statement by AT&T explains that the service interruption had affected only the virtual MVPD service’s program guide and that users are now accessing the programming channels normally. However, the weekend disruption has led to many customers unable to watch their favorite programming.

“On Friday and Saturday, DirecTV Now customers were unable to view program information for roughly half of the channels,” AT&T officials said. “Customers were able to access those channels despite program information being unavailable. Specifically, customers using iOS were able to access those channels by swiping from a nearby channel or accessing directly via the NETWORKS tab, as directed by our Care agents. They were unable to access affected channels directly via the Guide.”

DirecTV Now is the internet TV streaming service from AT&T that was launched in November 30, 2016. In the first month after its debut, there was a record 200,000 subscriber signups for the service, despite accusations of various technical problems by the press.

The streaming service has remained popular with the good packages it provides for the viewers, which is reflected in the growing subscriber base of DirecTV Now. What’s more, AT&T also provides cheap internet connectivity for their customers and coupling that with DirecTV Now service is a boon to the users.

Phil Swann, who closely watches the services of DirecTV, earlier reported about the weekend service interruption problem. According to his analysis, the channels were watchable to the viewers who accessed them through the channel list network by network. However, many customers are unaware of this distinction in the channel list. This led to the many complaints from the customers about outage and service disruptions.

Dan Rayburn, EVP of StreamingMedia.com and principal analyst for Frost & Sullivan, stated last month that AT&T’s decision to push out the service before it was ready for prime time broadcasting was hasty. “You can’t come out to the market and make a such a big declaration about how the service is going to be, use words like quality, talk about how it’s a game changer, and how it’s going to revolutionize video. If you came to market and said this is beta, you can set expectations properly,” he said.

However, AT&T has accepted the fact about the recurring glitches and outages in their service and are trying to fix the issues as soon as possible. Interestingly, AT&T Entertainment CTO Enrique Rodriguez states, “Absolutely there were problems … the problems were not as big as I expected.”