Trump blames AT&T for call glitch during Faith Leader Conference

US President Donald Trump took aim at AT&T on Monday after technical problems disrupted a conference call with faith leaders across the country. He blamed the wireless carrier for the issue and suggested the White House might switch providers for future calls.

“I’m doing a major Conference Call with Faith Leaders from all over the Country, and AT&T is totally unable to make their equipment work properly,” Trump posted on social media. He called on AT&T’s leadership to step in and added, “There are tens of thousands of people on the line!”

He didn’t give further details about what went wrong.

AT&T responded later that day, telling White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on X that it had reached out to the administration to assess the situation. By the evening, AT&T said its review pointed to a problem with the conference call platform itself—not its network.

“Unfortunately, this caused the delay, and we are working diligently to better understand the issue so we can prevent disruptions in the future,” the company wrote.

Trump later apologised to the call participants, describing the delay as “a long wait” and said another carrier might be used in the future. AT&T’s stock dipped briefly after his post but quickly recovered, with investors appearing to brush off the incident as a one-off issue.

Trump’s latest post also comes shortly after the Trump Organization announced a new business tied to mobile services. Earlier this month, his family business licensed the Trump name to launch ‘Trump Mobile,’ a US-based mobile phone and service package. The company is offering a $499 smartphone and says the mobile service will run on all three major US carriers, though details of the financial arrangement haven’t been disclosed.

The call glitch also follows months of security concerns involving AT&T. The company recently confirmed two major breaches that exposed sensitive data from millions of customers.

The first breach was linked to the hacking group Shiny Hunters. While AT&T initially denied the breach in 2021, more than 70 million records were later found for sale online in 2024. After a researcher flagged that encrypted customer passcodes from the leaked data were easy to crack, AT&T reset passwords for affected users. On April 2nd, the company admitted that 73 million current and former customers were impacted.

A second breach, revealed in July 2024, involved a third-party cloud storage provider. Hackers accessed AT&T call and text metadata from 2022, affecting around 109 million US customers. While names were not exposed, the scale of the breach led to arrests.

These incidents triggered multiple class-action lawsuits. A US District Judge has now given preliminary approval to a settlement covering both breaches. The agreement allows eligible users to claim compensation depending on their level of exposure and documented damages.

Here’s what’s been shared about the process:

• Who qualifies: Anyone whose data was compromised in either breach.
• Payouts: Up to $5,000 for those who can prove damages from the 2019 breach, and up to $2,500 for the 2024 breach.
• Other affected customers may still receive smaller amounts, even without submitting proof.
• Timeline: Notices will go out by August 4, 2025, and the deadline to file a claim is November 18, 2025. Payments could begin in early 2026, depending on final court approval set for December 3, 2025.

The settlement marks one of the larger data-related class actions in recent years, coming as telecom providers face increased scrutiny over how they store and secure customer information.

(Photo by Rubaitul Azad)

See also: AT&T achieves 20Gbps speeds on a production fibre network

Looking to revamp your digital transformation strategy? Learn more about Digital Transformation Week taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with IoT Tech Expo, AI & Big Data Expo, Cyber Security & Cloud Expo, and other leading events.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: at&t, connectivity, data, networks, smartphones, telecoms, wireless