US Senator Marco Rubio has reacted to the massive cellular outage across the country and warned the situation can be even more precarious in case China launches a cyberattack while 'invading' Taiwan.

He posted on X: "I don’t know the cause of the AT&T outage." "But I do know it will be 100 times worse when #China launches a cyber attack on America on the eve of a #Taiwan invasion," he said.

"And it won’t be just cell service they hit, it will be your power, your water and your bank," he alerted people.

AT & T network outage

AT&T on Saturday announced it will reimburse its customers for the near 12-hour network outage on Thursday.

"We recognize the frustration Thursday’s outage caused & know we let many of our customers down. To help make it right, we are applying a credit to potentially impacted accounts to help reassure our customers of our commitment to reliably connect them - anytime and anywhere. It will take 1-2 billing cycles to see the credit, depending on when their bill closes," the cellular network posted on X.

The mobile network will issue a $5 credit to 'potentially impacted' AT&T Wireless customers, which it says is the 'average cost of a full day of service', reported CNN.

The credit will not apply to customers under AT&T’s Business or Prepaid plans or those who have Cricket Wireless accounts, the American news channel reported.

Thousands of subscribers across the US could not fully access calls, texts, internet and emergency services following the network outage which was first reported on Thursday.

Was it a cyber attack?

The company later said the outage was not caused by cyber attack.

"Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack," the company said in a statement.