Credit‑as‑Accountability Normalization

Carriers increasingly respond to large outages with small account credits (e.g., Verizon’s $20), which function as a de‑facto liability regime that substitutes for faster regulatory action or durable resilience investments. Normalizing token credits risks institutionalizing low‑cost corporate apologies instead of strengthening network redundancy, mandating audits, or imposing proportionate penalties. — If credits become the standard response to major public‑safety outages, regulators must decide whether to accept this as sufficient remediation or to demand stronger technical fixes and enforceable remediation standards.