Nationwide Verizon Outage Wrecks Service for 170,000 Customers

Verizon is working to fix an outage that knocked out service for more than 170,000 customers across the U.S. on Wednesday, according to the website Downdetector.

The website tracks phone service and app outages; it reported a spike in outages around noon ET, and its map showed Seattle, Atlanta, and New York were hit especially hard. Other big cities hit by the outage included Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.

The New York Times reported some customers saw their mobile devices flash “SOS” in the status bar where the network signal is usually shown.

Verizon told NYT it was working quickly to resolve the problem.

“We are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers,” spokeswoman Karen Schulz told the paper. “Our engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly. We understand how important reliable connectivity is and apologize for the inconvenience.

Fox News ran a quick report on the outage on America Reports on Wednesday afternoon. Co-host John Roberts reported customers were grappling with voice and data problems.

Downdetector users from across the U.S. jumped in the comments section to talk about their phone issues.

“This outage is huge…..from coast to coast,” one commenter said. “Don’t be surprised that Iran is behind this.”

Another user in Long Island, New York, said her phone was in SOS mode, but her husband had no problem on his phone while sitting next to her on the couch.

Other irritated customers said their phones were only allowing them to make calls to emergency services but were otherwise unusable.

And like when other apps and services go down, a bunch of people joked — and vented — about it on X. One user pointed out the outage was pretty annoying after just receiving a notification to pay their bill.

Here is a taste:

Watch the Fox News report above.