Federal and local officials investigating Verizon’s massive outage are increasingly pointing to a suspected server failure in New Jersey — though the company has stopped short of confirming a definitive cause.
The telecoms giant was apologetic late Wednesday after hourslong disruptions knocked phones offline nationwide and even interfered with some 911 calls.
The outage, which began Wednesday afternoon and dragged into the late night hours, triggered a flood of complaints from coast to coast as Verizon customers reported phones stuck in SOS mode, dropped calls and dead mobile data.
Multiple law enforcement agencies examined whether the breakdown could have been the result of a cyberattack, but that scenario was ultimately ruled out, with officials believing the failure stemmed from an internal network issue tied to servers in New Jersey, according to reports cited by ABC News.
More than 178,000 Verizon customers were affected, according to Downdetector, with the heaviest concentration of reports coming from New York City, Atlanta, Charlotte and Houston.
By midafternoon Wednesday, reports had fallen below 60,000 as service gradually returned.
Customers took to the internet to vent their anger as they described losing service for much of the day.
Some Verizon subscribers saw brief restorations before their phones dropped back into SOS mode while others complained they couldn’t work, place calls or reliably reach family members.
The outage grew serious enough that New York City Emergency Management warned residents that some Verizon users were unable to reach 911 and advised calling from another carrier, using a landline or going directly to a police precinct or fire station.
By late Wednesday night, Verizon said the issue had been resolved after engineers worked through the night to restore service across the network.
“The outage has been resolved. If customers are still having an issue, we encourage them to restart their devices to reconnect to the network,” a Verizon spokesperson said in a statement.
“For those affected, we will provide account credits. Details will be shared directly with customers. We sincerely apologize for the disruption.”
