President Donald Trump publicly criticised AT&T for network performance issues that disrupted a conference call with faith leaders on Monday, threatening to switch carriers for future White House telecommunication needs.

Trump expressed his frustration on Truth Social, writing, “I apologise for the long wait on the Faith Leaders Conference Call. AT&T ought to get its act together.”

The president said he may need to reschedule the call and indicated he would “use another carrier the next time” if AT&T’s performance doesn’t improve.

Trump called for AT&T’s leadership, specifically referencing CEO John Stankey, though he referred to him as “whoever that may be,” to personally address the situation.

The president claimed “tens of thousands of people on the line” were affected and that AT&T is “totally unable to make their equipment work properly.”

AT&T, one of the largest telecommunications companies in the United States, responded quickly to the criticism by reaching out to the White House.

The company said in a social media post that it is “working to quickly understand and assess the situation” following the technical difficulties experienced during the presidential conference call.

The telecommunications giant is one of two vendors, along with Lumen Technologies, that hold contracts with the White House to provide teleconferencing and other telecommunications services.

Since the contract began in fiscal year 2020, AT&T has received $1.7 million in obligations from the White House, according to Bloomberg Government data, making the presidential criticism particularly significant for the company’s government business relationships.

The incident adds to AT&T’s recent string of network reliability challenges that have drawn public attention and regulatory scrutiny.

In February 2024, the company experienced a major outage that affected hundreds of thousands of customers nationwide and prompted an FBI investigation into the cause of the widespread service disruption.

Following the incident and other network problems throughout 2024, AT&T announced it would begin offering customer credits for internet outages and extended wait times as part of an effort to rebuild customer confidence.

The company provided $5 credits to customers affected by the February outage, though critics argued the compensation was insufficient given the scope and impact of the service disruption.

The public criticism from the president highlights the ongoing challenges telecommunications companies face in maintaining reliable network performance, particularly for high-profile government communications that require seamless connectivity for large-scale conference calls and other critical telecommunications needs.