Verizon said Wednesday night that its wireless service was back online after having suffered an outage affecting cellular data and voice services for much of the day.
A spokesperson for the company said shortly after 10 p.m. ET that the outage was resolved.
“If customers are still having an issue, we encourage them to restart their devices to reconnect to the network,” the spokesperson sad in a statement.
The spokesperson apologized for the outage and said customers would be given account credits, and that details would be shared with customers directly.
The nation’s largest wireless carrier had earlier said its “engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly.” Verizon issued its statement after a swath of social media comments directed at it, with users saying their mobile devices were showing no bars of service or “SOS,” indicating a lack of connection.
Verizon, which has more than 146 million customers, appears to have started experiencing service issues around noon ET, according to comments on X. Reports appeared to peak in the early afternoon and remained elevated later in the day — sitting close to 33,000 as of 8 p.m.
Verizon issued three more statements on social media later Wednesday, again saying its engineers were working to address the issue. But it did not say whether a specific reason for the outage had been identified, or when it would be resolved.
“Today, we let many of our customers down and for that, we are truly sorry,” it said in a statement at 9 p.m. ET. “They expect more from us.”
Republican New York State Assembly member Anil Beephan, Jr., Wednesday evening had called on the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the hourslong outage.
In a letter to FCC chairman Brendan Carr, Beephan wrote the outage has, “had a significant and unacceptable impact on public safety, including disruptions to reliable access to emergency communications and critical response systems.”
“More broadly, the continued instability of a major wireless carrier raises concerns about the resiliency and reliability of our greater communications infrastructure,” Beephan added.
The FCC said it was “aware of today’s wireless outages impacting some Verizon customers.”
“We are continuing to monitor the situation,” the agency added.
Users had initially reported problems with Verizon’s competitors, T-Mobile and AT&T, as well. But both companies said they weren’t experiencing any service problems.
“T-Mobile’s network is keeping our customers connected, and we’ve confirmed that our network is operating normally and as expected,” a spokesperson said.
A spokeswoman for AT&T also said its network was “operating normally.”
Emergency notification systems in Washington, D.C., New York City and several other major metro areas sent messages to residents about the outage.
“If you have an emergency and can not connect using your Verizon Wireless device, please connect using a device from another carrier, a landline, or go to a police district or fire station to report the emergency,” the AlertDC system told recipients.
New York City’s Office of Emergency Management said it was “working closely with our partners” to review the outage and “assess any potential effects on city agencies & essential services.”
Christina Farrell, first deputy commissioner of the New York City Emergency Management Department, said in an interview that she couldn’t say whether the outage was larger in scale than the AT&T outage in February 2024, when the carrier’s phone service didn’t work for an entire day.
“We know that they are looking, working on the issue,” she said of Verizon. The city is in touch with the company directly about the outage, Farrell said, coordinating across agencies in New York and with cities across the country.
“It’s also a good reminder for people to have an emergency plan, to have backups, Plan A, Plan B,” Farrell said. “Everybody should have a network, whether it’s your family, your friends, neighbors, your co-workers.”
