Is Verizon Down? Users Complain of Outages, Cell Phone Problems

Verizon users were reporting outages across the network Thursday, with the company confirming issues began earlier in the day.
Reports on Down Detector surged between 7 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET for the network, with New York City and Philadelphia among the largest affected areas. People in Los Angeles and Kansas also reported outages.
Verizon’s website reported “limited” service in New York City as of 1:45 p.m. ET, with an estimated restoration at around 3:55 p.m. Services affected included text messaging, mobile internet and 5G home internet.
Thursday’s outage comes around a week after a lengthy downtime for Verizon, which saw some of its customers without service for almost a day.
“Some Verizon customers in a few states in the Midwest experienced a brief service interruption today,” a spokesperson for Verizon told Newsweek. “Engineers were able to identify and resolve the issue and service was restored by 3:30 PM ET.”
During the outage on September 30, some customers could only use their phone in “SOS” mode, meaning they could only make emergency calls. After several hours of downtime, service was restored that evening.
A shorter outage affecting landline customers was then reported on Monday, but this was fixed within a few hours.
On Thursday, over 1,400 reports were made at the peak of the outage, again with many only able to access SOS mode. It was also reported that Spectrum Mobile was experiencing issues, as it runs off Verizon’s network.
Major downtime for networks is rare, with AT&T experiencing a similar issue in February with disruption lasting around 11 hours.
Verizon encourages customers to troubleshoot first if they are without signal, including restarting their devices. However, if they are in an area where the network is down, then customers should use WiFi for messaging and calling where possible, the company says.
It also states that it does not offer any credit or refund for the period without service.
“As America’s most awarded network, keeping you connected is our highest priority,” their website states. “Network disruptions are unexpected and we’re always committed to restoring service as quickly as possible.”
Disruption came as the company was seeking to reach those affected by Hurricane Milton, where it was reported over a million people were without service.
Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis posted on X, formerly Twitter, about his displeasure with the company, which he said had not prepared enough.
“This is Hurricane Michael all over again,” Patronis posted. “1M people are without cell service after Hurricane Milton. Unacceptable. We need that network up and running asap for our first responders. Can you hear me now?”
Verizon had encouraged users to set up satellite calling and messaging ahead of the storm hitting Florida.