Verizon’s network is experiencing technical issues affecting wireless calls and data. Verizon customers on the X reported seeing “SOS” instead of regular network sites on their smartphones, and even the carrier’s status page itself struggled to load, possibly due to the number of customers trying to access it.
Based on the experience of Verizon users to the staff of Engadget, the affected services appear to be wireless calls and data. Text messages continue to be sent normally, at least for some users. On DownDetector, reports of the Verizon outage began to increase around 12PM ET and numbered in the hundreds of thousands at its peak.
DownDetector also shows spikes in outage reports from competing networks like AT&T and T-Mobile, but in terms of magnitude, they are much smaller than the issue Verizon is experiencing. For example, Verizon peaked at 181,769 reports, while AT&T was just 1,769 reports. The difference between the two is big enough that those AT&T reports might come from people trying to contact Verizon customers and think their personal network was the problem.
In a post on the mobile provider’s X news account, Verizon acknowledged problems with its network. “We are aware of an issue affecting wireless voice and data services for some customers,” Verizon wrote. “Our engineers are involved and working to quickly identify and resolve the issue. We understand how important reliable communication is and apologize for the inconvenience.”
Based on DownDetector’s map of outage reports, Verizon’s network problems appear to be concentrated in major cities in the eastern United States. Most of the reports seem to be coming from Boston, New York and Washington DC, although the map shows hot spots in Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
At 2:14PM ET, Verizon shared with X that its engineering teams “remain fully operational” to work on fixing the outage. The company did not share when the issue will be resolved or how many of its customers are currently affected. Reports on DownDetector have decreased since their peak at 12:43PM ET, but thousands of Verizon customers are still experiencing problems with the service.
As of 3:09PM ET, Verizon has yet to share more information about the company’s mobile network acquisition. Some Verizon customers on the X have noticed that cell service is returning, but it’s unclear if this means the network’s technical problems have been fixed.
At 4:06PM ET, nearly two hours since the company’s last statement, at least one Engadget staff member reports that their service has been restored. Connectivity issues are still affecting Verizon customers, however. DownDetector received 55,000 outage reports as recently as 3:47PM ET.
Verizon posted at 4:12PM ET that work is ongoing to address the outage, but the issue has not been fully resolved. According to the company, its team is “on the ground working hard to fix today’s service issue affecting some customers.”
As of 4:52PM ET, Verizon’s network has been experiencing problems for nearly four hours, making today’s end nearly the last problem the company has had in 2024. As with that 2024 outage, Verizon has yet to share what exactly is causing the problems with its network. Without an official update, it’s safe to assume that the company is still working on a fix.
As of 5:41PM ET, DownDetector’s latest stats still show more than 46,000 people reporting problems with Verizon’s network. Based on the field map, these same cities are posting the most outage reports, although reporting appears to be more widespread than ever as news of outages has spread across the country.
At 6:20PM ET, the situation was much the same. Tens of thousands of users (including Engadget editors) still don’t have proper service, and Verizon hasn’t updated its customers as of 4:12PM ET. There are occasional reports of the service returning and then failing again but no real solution seems to have been implemented.
At 10:20PM ET, Verizon announced that the outage had been resolved and encouraged subscribers who still had issues to reboot their devices to reconnect to the network. The company also said it would provide account credits to affected customers.
Both T-Mobile and AT&T have confirmed that their networks are not affected by the problems faced by their competitor. In a post on X, T-Mobile shared that its network is “operating normally and as expected.” Meanwhile, AT&T says that for any of its customers experiencing issues, “it’s not…the other guys.”
Update, January 14, 7:25PM ET: This article was published as a developing story and was revised several times over a period of seven hours. These updates were additional, and are time-stamped within the article. As of writing, Verizon is still down for tens of thousands of users and the company’s support team has not released an update on the system in more than three hours. Happy Wednesday!
Update January 14, 10:39PM ET: This story has been updated to add Verizon’s latest update that the outage has been resolved.
