Verizon customers across several major U.S. cities lost voice and text service for most of Wednesday, with full restoration not coming until shortly after 10 p.m. ET.
At a Glance
- Outage reports surged past 180,000 by 11:40 a.m. CT, according to DownDetector
- Service was restored around 9:20 p.m. CT/10 p.m. ET, Verizon says
- The company will issue account credits to affected customers
- Why it matters: Millions were unable to make calls or send texts, leaving phones stuck in emergency-only “SOS mode”
The disruption began sweeping cities including Chicago around 11 a.m. CT, DownDetector data show. Users flooded social media with complaints that devices showed “SOS” instead of signal bars, allowing only 911 calls.
Verizon stayed largely silent for hours after the first alerts surfaced. The carrier’s first public acknowledgment came around noon CT via a brief social-media post noting an unspecified “issue.”
Apology and Credits Promised
Shortly before 8 p.m. CT, the company issued a fuller apology.
“Today, we let many of our customers down and for that, we are truly sorry,” Verizon posted on X. “They expect more from us.”
The message pledged that “for any customer affected, we will provide account credits and share updates soon.”
An hour later, at 9 p.m. ET, Verizon followed up:
“We will make this right – for those affected, we will provide account credits. Details will be shared directly with customers. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.”
Restoration and Next Steps
Verizon urged anyone still experiencing problems to restart their device to reconnect to the network. The company has not revealed what triggered the failure, saying only that its teams had “worked non-stop” to restore service.
James O Connor Fields reported for News Of Philadelphia.
