Verizon Confirms Wireless Outage As Thousands Report Voice And Data Failures

(RTTNews) - Verizon (VZ) acknowledged a service disruption on Wednesday after customers across the U.S. reported problems with mobile voice and data connections.

The company said its engineering teams were aware of the issue and were working to restore service as quickly as possible, apologizing for the inconvenience caused by the outage.

Data from Downdetector showed a surge in user complaints shortly after midday, with reports peaking at nearly 173,000 around 12:30 p.m. ET before gradually easing through the afternoon. Most users flagged problems with mobile phone service, followed by lack of signal, while a smaller share cited mobile internet issues.

Outage reports were concentrated in major cities including New York, Washington, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles and Portland, though Verizon noted that the true number of affected customers may differ from crowd-sourced figures.

In a later update, the company said its teams remained fully deployed and focused on resolving the disruption, adding that it understood the impact the outage was having on customers' daily routines.

The incident follows a nationwide Verizon outage in September 2024 that left more than 100,000 users without service and prompted scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission. That episode came after the carrier had already paid more than $1 million to settle a separate investigation into 911 service failures in multiple states and agreed to a compliance plan with the regulator.

Wednesday, VZ closed at $39.83, up 2.1%, and is trading lower after hours at $39.74, down 0.23%, on the NYSE.