Several hours after an “issue” began impacting Verizon service in several major U.S. cities Wednesday, the company issued an apology and promised account credits for those impacted.
Customers in several U.S. cities reported issues making calls and sending texts, including in Chicago, according to DownDetector. Several said their phones were stuck in “SOS mode.”
The outage continued until around 10:20 p.m. ET, according to Verizon.
The company posted an update on X about the restoration of service, advising customers to restart their devices if issues persist.
The outage has been resolved. If customers are still having an issue, we encourage them to restart their devices to reconnect to the network. For those affected, we will provide account credits. Details will be shared directly with customers. We sincerely apologize for the…
— Verizon News (@VerizonNews) January 15, 2026
Verizon acknowledged the issue in several posts on social throughout the day, starting around noon with an announcement of the problems and later providing updates that their teams were working on solving the “issue” throughout the day.
Roughly an hour before the outage was resolved, Verizon said they were “truly sorry” for letting their customers down during the outage in a post on X around 8 p.m. CT/9 p.m. ET.
“We will make this right – for any customer affected, we will provide account credits and share updates soon,” Verizon said in the post.
The company also provided an update on their progress addressing the “issue” that caused the troubles with service, saying they are “working non-stop and making progress.”
Though the company did not provide any concrete timeline for fixing the issue, their 8 p.m. update said “teams will continue to work through the night until service is restored for all impacted customers.”
Today, we let many of our customers down and for that, we are truly sorry. They expect more from us.
We are working non-stop and making progress. Our teams will continue to work through the night until service is restored for all impacted customers.
We will make this right -…
— Verizon News (@VerizonNews) January 15, 2026
Verizon has not provided any additional information regarding what caused the “issue.”