AT&T mobile customers across the country were left without service for several hours on Thursday, unable to make calls or access data, in a major outage that disrupted tens of thousands of people. Now the telecommunications giant plans to offer some credit to impacted customers as an apology, according to a statement released on Saturday.

The outage began early Thursday morning around 2 AM and lasted until 2 PM that afternoon, during which over 73,000 customers reported service disruptions to the website Downdetector.com. The outage affected not only AT&T wireless subscribers but also customers of other carriers attempting to reach AT&T mobile users, essentially crippling a key portion of the nation’s communications infrastructure for a period of 12 hours.

In a statement posted to the AT&T website, company officials apologized for the frustration and disruption caused by the outage. “We recognize the frustration this outage caused and know we let many of our customers down,” the statement read. “We understand this may have impacted their ability to connect with family, friends and others. Small business owners may have been impacted, potentially disrupting an essential way they connect with customers.”

To make amends with customers, AT&T says they will automatically apply a $5 credit to the accounts of those impacted by the outage, which they say represents the average cost of a full day of wireless service. The credits will be applied within 1-2 billing cycles, according to the company. However, AT&T business customers, prepaid and Cricket subscribers will not receive the credit.

Initially, there was speculation that the outage may have been related to strong solar flares impacting communications infrastructure, but AT&T later revealed it was caused by an internal technical error in network coding, essentially a mistake by the company itself. Federal investigators are still examining the incident.

In their statement, AT&T officials committed to identifying the root cause and taking steps to prevent such an outage from recurring. “Our priority is to continuously improve and be sure our customers stay connected,” they said. But for now, impacted subscribers will receive a small token of financial compensation for the disruption and inconvenience.

The outage served as a reminder of how dependent modern life is on mobile connectivity, and how much disruption can ensue when a key provider like AT&T experiences technical failures. For a company striving to maintain consumer confidence and trust, the offer of $5 credits appears to be an effort, albeit small, to reestablish goodwill after such a significant disruption of service.