Verizon says it’s ‘fully restored’ service after major outage

Verizon says it has fully restored its network following a major outage that began earlier in the day.

“Verizon engineers have fully restored today’s network disruption that impacted some customers,” the company said in a message posted on social media at about 7:15 p.m. ET on Monday.

It said service had now returned “to normal levels,” but added that if any of its customers are still experiencing issues, they should try restarting their device.

“We know how much people rely on Verizon and apologize for any inconvenience,” the company said.

Verizon engineers have fully restored today's network disruption that impacted some customers. Service has returned to normal levels.  If you are still having issues, we recommend restarting your device. We know how much people rely on Verizon and apologize for any inconvenience.…

— Verizon News (@VerizonNews) September 30, 2024

The problems started at around 9:30 a.m. ET on Monday and impacted everything from cellular connectivity and data to phone calls and text messages.

Verizon first acknowledged the issue in a post on social media at around midday in which it said it was “aware of an issue impacting service for some customers,” adding: “Our engineers are engaged and we are working quickly to identify and solve the issue.”

However, it has yet to offer any explanation about what caused the outage.

According to data shared in June, Verizon has more than 114 million wireless retail connections, 94 million wireless retail postpaid connections, and 20.3 million wireless retail prepaid connections, suggesting that the disruption will have been widespread.

Of course, Verizon isn’t the only major cell phone company to experience outages. AT&T customers suffered huge disruption in February after a botched network update. According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), all voice and 5G data services for AT&T wireless customers became unavailable, affecting more than 125 million devices, blocking more than 92 million voice calls, and preventing more than 25,000 calls to 911 call centers.