Verizon said late Wednesday that it has resolved an hours-long outage that impacted tens of thousands of customers of the wireless carrier.
The service interruption lasted for more than seven hours. According to DownDetector, the biggest impacts were felt in New York City, Atlanta, Miami, Houston and Charlotte, North Carolina.
DownDetector, which aggregates data on service outages, said more than 1.5 million Verizon customers reported wireless and data outages on Wednesday.
At least 178,284 Verizon customers were affected at one point, the website reported.
Verizon, the nationβs largest wire carrier, has more than 146 million customers, NBC News reported.
[ Verizon users report outage ]
βToday, we let many of our customers down and for that, we are truly sorry,β the company said in a statement posted on social media. βThey expect more from us.β
Verizon did not reveal the cause and scope of the service disruption, but added that there was no evidence of a cyberattack.
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 theβ¦
— Verizon News (@VerizonNews) January 15, 2026
βThe outage has been resolved,β Verizon said in a statement. βIf customers are still having an issue, we encourage them to restart their devices to reconnect to the network.β
Lee W. McKnight, an associate professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, who researches wireless grids, told The New York Times that network outages like the one affecting Verizon were more likely to be caused by a software configuration problem or human error than a cyberattack.
McKnight added that telecommunications companies often do not adequately train their employees to deal with software issues.
βThey havenβt adjusted their training to deal with the current reality,β he told the newspaper. βOne little mistake and it takes out whatever happened today.β
The outage left many customers without the ability to make phone calls, send text messages or use data, CNN reported. On social media sites, some customers reported their cellphones were in SOS mode or without access to service.
Verizon said that it would give $20 account credits to customers affected by the outage.
Most affected customers can log into their myVerizon app and accept the credit, ABC News reported. Business customers will be contacted by Verizon.
βThis credit isnβt meant to make up for what happened. No credit really can. But itβs a way of acknowledging our customersβ time and showing that this matters to us,β Verizon said.
Yesterday, we did not meet the standard of excellence you expect and that we expect of ourselves. To help provide some relief to those affected, we will give you a $20 account credit that can be easily redeemed by logging into the myVerizon app. You will receive a text messageβ¦
— Verizon News (@VerizonNews) January 15, 2026
The FCC said it was aware of the outage, NBC News reported.
βWe are continuing to monitor the situation,β the agency said in a statement.
Krispy Kreme took advantage of Verizonβs problems, offering customers a free glazed doughnut for two hours on Wednesday to ease their frustrations about connectivity issues.
βSOS got you down?β the doughnut chain wrote on social media. βWe can hear you now β and weβre serving up.β
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