Verizon says it’s fixed the massive outage that left many without phone calling and data services
By Lisa Eadicicco, CNN
(CNN) — Verizon said it has resolved an hours-long outage that is believed to have left tens of thousands of US customers without access to voice and data services for much of Wednesday.
“Today, we let many of our customers down and for that, we are truly
sorry,” a Verizon spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “They expect more from us.”
The announcement came around 10:30 p.m. Eastern time, many hours after issue reports emerged in major cities from New York to Dallas early Wednesday afternoon through Downdetector, a website that tracks user-submitted reports of outages.
The outage left many without the ability to make phone calls, send text messages or use data. Some on social media reported their phones being stuck in SOS mode or losing access to service.
Verizon said on Thursday that it’s providing customers with a $20 account credit that will be redeemable through the myVerizon app. A spokesperson said that amount covers “multiple days of service” on average.
“This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened. No credit really can,” Verizon said in a statement. “But it’s a way of acknowledging our customers’ time and showing that this matters to us.”
Downdetector told CNN over email on Wednesday afternoon that more than 1 million issue reports related to the outage had been generated within the last 24 hours. At its peak, more than 178,000 reports were filed within a 15-minute window.
Verizon has not revealed the cause behind the outage.
The outage is one of several high-profile tech outages in the past year that have interrupted daily life for thousands, including an Amazon Web Services issue that took down most of the web in October. In 2024, a widespread AT&T outage left customers across the United States without service and prompted a Federal Communications Commission investigation.
Among the Verizon issue reports submitted to Downdetector on Wednesday, 59% cited issues related to “mobile phone failure,” while 34% mentioned a “loss of signal.”
Customers in New York City, Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston and Dallas seemed to have been most impacted, according to the website’s data.
Verizon said users who are still experiencing issues should restart their devices to reconnect to the network.
Users also reported problems with AT&T and T-Mobile service on Downdetector, although spokespeople for both networks said their services are operating normally. Customers may experience service issues when trying to contact those on Verizon.
“T-Mobile’s network is keeping our customers connected, and we’ve confirmed that our network is operating normally and as expected,” T-Mobile said in a comment to CNN. “However, due to Verizon’s reported outage, our customers may not be able to reach someone with Verizon service at this time.”
Jack Burbank, a senior member of the technical organization IEEE and vice president of advanced communication technologies at Sabre Systems, said over email that a range of causes could result in disruptions like this, including “faulty configuration changes” or “software updates gone wrong.”
When cell service is unavailable, some carriers, including Verizon, support the ability to make calls over the internet through a feature called Wi-Fi calling. To make sure Wi-Fi calling is enabled on an iPhone, open the settings menu, tap the cellular option and choose Wi-Fi calling. The instructions are similar for Android: Choose the calls option in the settings menu and select Wi-Fi calling.
Phones from Apple, Google and Samsung on Verizon’s network also support satellite text messaging, which make it possible to send texts even without cellular or Wi-Fi service. But satellite signals can be blocked by buildings or trees, making it difficult to connect if a user isn’t in an open space.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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