What Happened To Verizon? Service Is Back Following An Outage

Verizon’s cell service experienced a significant outage starting around 10 a.m. ET on September 30, 2024, affecting phone calls, text messages, and data for many customers across the U.S. Reports of the outage peaked with over 105,000 complaints, particularly impacting users in states like New York and California.

By the evening, Verizon confirmed that the service was being restored and apologized for the disruption, noting that their engineers were actively working on the issue.

“Verizon engineers have fully restored today’s network disruption that impacted some customers. Service has returned to normal levels,” Verizon said in a statement on Monday.

“If you are still having issues, we recommend restarting your device. We know how much people rely on Verizon and apologize for any inconvenience. We appreciate your patience.”

Verizon’s cell service outage began around 11 a.m. ET on September 30, 2024, with approximately 100,000 reports logged on DownDetector, which monitors service disruptions.

Verizon customers expressed frustration on the company’s verified account on X regarding the recent service outage, which left many unable to connect to the network.

Numerous iPhone users reported their devices were stuck in “SOS” mode, allowing only emergency calls via satellite. Verizon has around 114.2 million subscribers in the U.S.

While outages are infrequent, they can cause widespread issues, as seen with AT&T’s 11-hour disruption in February, attributed to a technical error from a network update, and further outages in June and August.

A telecommunications expert highlighted that network outages are often caused by a combination of overloaded networks in major cities, problematic software updates, and various technical issues.

However, telecom companies tend to remain tight-lipped about the specific reasons for outages, which can be frustrating for customers, especially those who rely on their services for work, such as ride-share drivers, or for accessing emergency services like 911.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) acknowledged the Verizon outage affecting customers in several regions and stated it was investigating the cause and extent of the disruption.