NEW YORK (AP) – Many Verizon customers encountered a widespread outage on Wednesday, disrupting calling and other cellular services across the U.S.
The New York-based carrier acknowledged that there was an “issue impacting wireless voice and data services.” Verizon didn’t specify what was causing the disruptions, but said in an update shared on social media that it had deployed its engineering teams and was working to resolve the problem “as quickly as possible.”
Outage tracker Downdetector showed that Verizon customers began to report issues with their service around noon E.T. Reports appeared to peak at more than 175,000 by 12:30 p.m. ET — but still remained elevated later into the afternoon, sitting at nearly 68,000 as of 2:30 p.m. ET.
Impacted customers said they saw “SOS” or other no signal messages on their phones. In cities like New York, warnings were sent out noting that the outage may disrupt 911 calls — urging residents try landlines or a device from another carrier, if available, in case of an emergency, or visit local police or fire stations in person.
“Network has been out … they say they’ve already corrected it, but we’re still having trouble connecting to it. A lot of people have been coming through here,” said Diane Torres, who was outside the parking lot of the Verizon store on Broadway trying to get her phone to work.
“For our prescriptions, for our doctors, it’s just been a pain,” Joe Torres said.
When cellular outages happen, some phone companies also urge consumers to try to connect to Wi-Fi and use internet calling. If Wi-Fi is still unavailable, there can be a limited number of other options — including sending messages via satellite on newer iPhones.
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