Verizon network outage: Some wireless customers can’t place calls or access data
By Lisa Eadicicco, CNN
(CNN) — Verizon said some of its wireless services were down Wednesday, leaving many customers without access to voice and data services.
Downdetector, a website that tracks user-submitted reports of outages among popular online services, told CNN over email that more than 1 million issue reports related to the outage have been generated within the last 24 hours. At its peak, more than 178,000 reports were filed within a 15-minute window.
Verizon acknowledged the issue in a post on the social media platform X on Wednesday.
“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. We understand how important reliable connectivity is and apologize for the inconvenience,” the statement said.
Verizon said in a statement to CNN that its engineers are addressing the service interruptions and that its teams “remain fully deployed and are focused on the issue.”
“We understand the impact this has on your day and remain committed to resolving this as quickly as possible,” Verizon said in its statement.
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.
Some users on social media reported their phones being stuck in SOS mode or losing access to service, trends that Downdetector also noticed in its analysis of user-submitted reports. Among those reports, 59% cited issues related to “mobile phone failure,” while 34% mentioned a “loss of signal.”
The issue reports began to escalate around noon and have been declining throughout the afternoon Eastern time, according to Downdetector’s public data. Its data indicates the outage has particularly impacted New York City, Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston and Dallas.
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.”
Verizon didn’t reveal the cause behind the outage. Jack Burbank, a senior member of the nonprofit 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.”
Those impacted by Verizon’s outage can still make calls and access the internet over Wi-Fi. 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 should 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 is developing and will be updated with additional details.
The-CNN-Wire
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