Business|Verizon Is Restoring Service After Outages Reported Across the U.S.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/business/verizon-mobile-outages-us.html
The number of cases peaked at more than 100,000 Monday morning, according to the website Downdetector. Users complained of being unable to make calls or send texts.
Sept. 30, 2024Updated 7:04 p.m. ET
Verizon said its engineers were restoring service on Monday evening after thousands of users across the United States reported outages on Monday morning in major cities, including in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York and Phoenix and across a swath of the Midwest.
The carrier said in a post on social media that it was working “around the clock to fully resolve this issue.” It apologized “for any inconvenience some of our customers experienced today.”
According to the website Downdetector, which tracks user reports of internet disruptions, more than 104,000 cases of Verizon outages were reported across the country as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern, more than an hour after the first issues were reported.
By about noon, that number had dropped to around 78,000. By 6 p.m., that figure had dropped to about 5,000.
A map posted on the site showed areas with the most reports.
On the site, many users said their cellphones were intermittently displaying “SOS” mode and that they could not place calls or send or receive text messages.
The Federal Communications Commission acknowledged the outage later in the day and said it was trying to determine the cause.
Affected regions included the Southeast, where residents were recovering from Hurricane Helene.
On social media, where Verizon customers went to check if outages were widespread, Verizon technical support posted the same statement offered by the spokesman.
Throughout the morning, tech support responded individually to scores of users reporting issues.
Many people on X complained about how the outage would affect their ability to do jobs, such as deliver Instacart orders.
Verizon, one of the largest mobile carriers in the world, has 114.2 million wireless subscribers in the United States.
Jesus Jiménez contributed reporting.