The Verizon outage that likely disrupted service for customers across the country Wednesday finally seemed to end by the evening for most people. Reports began flooding the website Downdetector.com around noon Eastern Time, with more than 175,000 users experiencing problems by 12:37 p.m. By early evening, the site received 1.5 million reports. The disruption knocked out voice, text, and data services for customers, affecting major cities from New York to Houston to San Francisco.
At 8:59 p.m. Eastern, Verizon issued a statement on social media: “Today, we let many of our customers down and for that, we are truly sorry. They expect more from us. We are working non-stop and making progress. Our teams will continue to work through the night until service is restored for all impacted customers. We will make this right – for any customer affected, we will provide account credits and share updates soon.”
By 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, service appeared to be restored for the bulk of affected customers, with about 5,000 reports still showing up on Downdetector. “I’ve been down since around 11:00 AM, I’m beyond angry,” one user commented on the site
What people are saying about the outage:
The initial panic was real. When phones suddenly displayed “SOS” instead of signal bars, many Verizon users feared something worse than a network problem.
“I thought [I] got sim swapped and had a heart attack,” one Reddit user posted on the r/sysadmin forum, referring to a fraud scheme where criminals hijack phone numbers. Another replied: “Literally what I was thinking and freaking out.”
Family coordination became impossible. For parents trying to track college-age children or spouses commuting home, the outage created hours of anxiety.
“I have 5 phone lines and they are ALL DOWN or go IN AND OUT,” another Reddit post said. “I’m glued to my phone around the time my college kids get out of their last class and I want to make sure they make it to their dorms on time as well as my wife’s location and she gets home safe while I get home.”
Recovery was inconsistent and frustrating. When service began returning in the afternoon, it didn’t last.
“I heard that people are getting service back but can’t make any calls or do anything, that happened to me to here in Tampa, came back for 3 minutes then immediately went back into SOS,” a Downdetector commenter reported.
A West Texas Reddit user wrote: “I restarted my phone and for about a minute it looked like I had service again,” before noting that they continued to be impacted for nearly four hours. “My boyfriend is 2 hours away in another city working, I wonder if he is having issues as well, no way of knowing right now,” they added.
Other customers reporting having service on certain phones, but not on others. “Weirdly 1 of my 3 phones on this account IS working but other two show SOS mode,” wrote a Reddit user. That person also claimed they were able to get service on an older iPhone 13.
Major cities posted alerts
Officials from the D.C. Office of Unified Communications issued an urgent alert about 911 access:
“OUC is aware of a nationwide Verizon outage affecting some users trying to reach 911. If you have an emergency and cannot connect using your Verizon device, please connect using a device from another carrier, a landline, or go to a police or fire station to report the emergency.”
New York City’s Emergency Management office said it was working with partners to assess potential effects on city agencies and essential services, and that the cause and scope were still being investigated. The city saw over 10,000 reported outages just after 1:00 PM, according to TIME.
Verizon’s response
The company acknowledged the problem but offered few details. Verizon posted updates to social media throughout the afternoon, but the messages largely repeated the same points.
“We are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers. Our engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly,” spokesperson Christina Moon Ashraf told WIRED.
In a post on X, Verizon wrote: “We understand how important reliable connectivity is and apologize for the inconvenience.”
Three hours into the outage, Verizon posted: “We know this is a huge inconvenience, and our top priority is to get you back online and connected as fast as possible. We appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this issue.”
What caused the Verizon outage?
As of Wednesday evening, Verizon still hasn’t explained what caused the outage or provided a timeline for when all services would be fully restored.
Syed Rafiul Hussain, a mobile network security researcher at Purdue University, told WIRED it probably wasn’t the result of a cyberattack. He said the outage may have stemmed from a server configuration problem in Verizon’s core network. “It is unlikely a coordinated attack against the Verizon network,” he said.
Others fear the outage will turn out to be the result of a cyberattack. “This is clearly a major disturbance,” wrote a Reddit user who claimed to be a telecommunications technician and electrician. They added that “this seems a little too wide scale to not be a targeted event.”
Another concerned user wrote: “At this point nothing would surprise me. I’m trying to prepare myself mentally for anything and taking out our communication is something that isn’t too far fetched.”
Still, whether you’re a Verizon customer or not, many believe the issue is becoming a somewhat frequent problem in the U.S. “I’m so curious what the issue will be revealed at the end of this,” a Reddit user posted. “We’ve been seeing more of these massive outages. AWS, Cloudflare, Microsoft, Google. The more dependency on a short list of major infrastructure organizations, the more centralized we become, the worse off we are.”
Looking ahead
The outage exposed how dependent Americans have become on cellular networks for both everyday communication and emergency access. When hundreds of thousands of people report they have no service and some people can’t reach 911, even a few hours without connectivity becomes a public safety crisis.
Wednesday’s disruption also raised uncomfortable questions. Some Reddit users pointed to recent Verizon layoffs: “They just laid off a bunch of techs before Xmas. My [dad’s] whole crew was one of them.”
While that may not be the issue here, what’s certain is that customers want answers Verizon hasn’t yet provided about what went wrong, and how the company plans to prevent similar failures in the future.
READ MORE: Verizon outage disrupts calling and data services for phone customers across the U.S.
This article is written with the assistance of generative artificial intelligence based solely on Washington Times original reporting and wire services. For more information, please read our AI policy or contact Steve Fink, Director of Artificial Intelligence, at sfink@washingtontimes.com
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