Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) suffered from a nationwide service outage throughout Wednesday morning that left customers across the continental United States without access to various services offered by the carrier.
Just as the clock struck midnight on Wednesday, Verizon customers took to the outage-tracking website Downdetector.com to report that they were experiencing difficulties placing calls, sending texts, and surfing the web. Customers attempting to place phone calls were greeted with the automated message "All circuits are busy. Please try your call again later." As the morning progressed, more outages were progressively reported, and it didn't take long for social media to explode with complaints from disgruntled customers. Many took to Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) using the hashtag #verizonoutage to express their frustrations. Police departments took to social media as well; many were in contact with Verizon and were assured services would be restored soon. Departments also assured those affected that 911 services were still working.
Verizon quickly addressed the problem and took steps to rectify it, assuring customers that the issues would be resolved. Later in the day, Verizon spokesperson Chris McCann addressed the outage, "Overnight some wireless customers experienced a dialing error when placing calls from their wireless phone to a long-distance landline number. This issue was resolved at 6:30 a.m. ET. We apologize for any inconvenience." Verizon would go on to state that while many components of its services were down, cellular-to-cellular calls, local calls, and calls to 911 were not among those affected.
While Verizon stated that the issue was solved at 6:30 a.m., the complaints of service outages peaked roughly half an hour later. On social media and Downdetector, many customers reported that their issues were resolved rather quickly, others, however, claimed that the outages lasted much longer. Many customers were still reporting issues as late as 9:00. Despite continued assurances that the issues were resolved, customers had taken to Downdetector.com to complain that they were still experiencing outages. As of the writing of this article, some customers reportedly are still without service or experiencing severe slowdowns in locations such as Hollister, CA and Chicago, IL. The latest outage map at the time of writing shows much of the Northeast and parts of Florida and California experiencing outages and slowdowns.