Widespread disruption: Verizon’s wireless network suffered a major outage Wednesday affecting voice, texting, and mobile data services for millions of users nationwide.
Service restored after hours: The outage persisted for much of the day but was largely resolved by late Wednesday night, with Verizon offering account credits to affected customers.
Public safety concerns and scrutiny: Some cities warned that emergency calling could be unreliable during the outage, and the FCC said it will review the incident.
Verizon has not yet disclosed the cause of Wednesday’s massive outage that disrupted service to hundreds of thousands of customers nationwide, affecting wireless voice, data, and texting services for about 10 hours.
Service interruptions began around noon ET, peaking with over 170,000 reports on Downdetector, forcing many phones into SOS mode and prompting emergency alerts in cities like New York and Washington, D.C. Verizon confirmed engineers were investigating but provided no specifics on the trigger, ruling out a cyberattack.
Resolution and response
Reports of service disruptions spanned the country, hitting major metropolitan areas including New York City, Houston, Philadelphia, Dallas, Miami, Chicago, and Atlanta. Tens of thousands of users logged outage incidents at the peak of the disruption, and localized alerts from city officials advised residents to use landlines or alternative carriers if they needed to contact emergency services like 911.
News outlets and outage monitors recorded elevated report volumes throughout the afternoon, though numbers varied by source. While some trackers showed over 1.5 million customer reports by early evening, other data indicated several hundred thousand users were affected at peak times.
Company response and resolution
Verizon acknowledged the issue publicly and confirmed it had deployed engineering teams to address the service interruption. By approximately 10:20 p.m. ET Wednesday, the company said the primary outage was resolved and advised users still experiencing trouble to restart their devices to reconnect to the network.
In a message to customers, Verizon apologized for the disruption and announced it would offer account credits to those who were impacted by the outage.
The outage drew attention from regulators, including the Federal Communications Commission, which said it would review the incident and take appropriate action given concerns about communications infrastructure reliability and the potential strain on emergency services.