Updated Sept. 30, 7:28 p.m. ET: At 7:18 p.m. ET, the company tweeted that its engineers had resolved the issue. The original story was updated twice with a statement from Verizon after publication and continues below.
Verizon Mobile customers reported widespread outages across the United States on Monday. Starting around 9:30 a.m. ET, hundreds of thousands of people reported problems with the mobile service on Downdetector, which tracks user-submitted outage reports. The volume of reports jumped to about 105,000 at 11:20 a.m., but was still at about 59,000 at 12:52 p.m.
Many claimed they were unable to make or receive phone calls or exchange text messages. If you’re using an iPhone, you may see “SOS” in the top right corner of your screen instead of the usual connection bar. This is a common sight when there are limited or no services. However, affected iPhone users can still make emergency calls through other networks.
Downdetector’s heatmap suggested the problem was most prevalent in New York, New Jersey, Georgia, and other parts of the East Coast and Midwest. As of 1:10 PM ET, reports of a narrow yellow band are also occurring on the West Coast. Heat spots are intensifying in Los Angeles.
We are aware of an issue impacting service for some customers. Our engineers work hard and work quickly to identify and resolve issues.
— Verizon News (@VerizonNews) September 30, 2024
Verizon confirmed that service for some customers was affected. “Our engineers are working diligently and are working quickly to resolve the issue,” the company wrote to X at 11:48 a.m. The cause of the power outage is not yet clear.
As of 3:45 p.m. ET, Verizon had not yet provided an update on the outage via X. User crash reports were still pouring into Downdetector, at about 48,000 as of 3:10 p.m.
At 5:04 p.m. ET, the company tweeted that “service has begun to be restored,” and Downdetector reported fewer than 30,000 outages.
Verizon engineers are working to resolve network issues and service is beginning to be restored. We know how much people trust Verizon, and we apologize for the inconvenience caused to some customers today. We continue to work around the clock to resolve this issue once and for all…
— Verizon News (@VerizonNews) September 30, 2024
The company tweeted at 7:18 p.m. ET that its engineers had “fully restored today’s network outage.” Downdetector reported fewer than 3,500 outages. The company has not yet announced anything about the cause of the failure.
Verizon engineers have fully recovered from today’s network outage that affected some customers. Service has returned to normal levels. If the issue persists, we recommend restarting your device. We know how much people trust Verizon, and we apologize for any inconvenience.
— Verizon News (@VerizonNews) September 30, 2024
