Verizon says it is working to address a large-scale outage that left thousands of wireless phone customers without service on Wednesday.
The outage began around 1 p.m. Eastern Time (around 10 a.m. Pacific Time) when the website Down Detector began receiving reports from customers of Verizon and other services that their smartphones were not working.
Verizon provides network support to some cable operators like Comcast and Charter for their wireless phone offerings, and customers of those services were also reporting service-related disruptions. AT&T and T-Mobile customers were also affected in areas where wireless towers are supplied with data from fiber backhaul lines owned or operated by Verizon.
Customers in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Sacramento, Chicago, the Washington, D.C. area, Houston and Atlanta were among those complaining about a lack of service on all three major wireless phone providers. Users of Apple’s iPhone and iPad tablets and Android phones and tablets were among those affected.
DownDetector peaked with more than 170,000 outage reports by Wednesday afternoon. The actual number of customers impacted by the outage is likely higher, since some were unable to submit outage reports due to a lack of network connectivity.
“We are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers,” a Verizon spokesperson said in a statement e-mailed to reporters on Wednesday. “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.”
Verizon is the second-largest wireless provider in terms of total customers served across its flagship post-paid brand and prepaid subsidiary services, including Visible, Total by Verizon and TracFone. The company recently initiated a round of layoffs that saw 15,000 positions eliminated, which Verizon CEO Dan Schulman justified as necessary to make the company more-limber in a competitive environment.
Verizon will report its fourth quarter and full-year earnings for 2025 at the end of January.
