Verizon confirmed Wednesday that a widespread outage disrupted wireless voice and data services for customers across the United States, leaving many people unable to make calls, send texts, or use mobile data.
The company said its engineers are actively working to restore service and apologized for the disruption, promising account credits for those affected.
In a statement shared on social media, Verizon said, "We are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers. Our engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly."
The company added that it understands how important reliable service is and said it was sorry for the inconvenience.
Reports of the outage began rising around midday Wednesday. According to outage-tracking website Downdetector, nearly 173,000 reports were logged around 12:30 pm ET.
The number slowly dropped throughout the afternoon, falling to about 46,000 reports by 5:30 pm ET.
At its peak, Downdetector said more than 178,000 reports were filed within just 15 minutes, showing how widespread the problem was.
Most of the reported issues involved mobile phone failures. According to FoxBusiness, about 62% of users said they could not use their phones at all, while 34% reported a complete loss of signal.
A smaller number experienced mobile internet problems. Major cities including New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, and Dallas were among the hardest hit.
⚠️ BREAKING: Massive Verizon outage hitting users across much of the US right now! 📱🚨
— Vitamvivere (@Vitamvivere) January 14, 2026
Tens to hundreds of thousands of reports pouring in on Downdetector (peaking over 170k–300k+), with many phones stuck in SOS mode pic.twitter.com/QjuCE3gJOP
Verizon Says Outage Fixed, Cause Unclear
By Wednesday evening, Verizon issued another statement acknowledging customer frustration. "Today, we let many of our customers down and for that, we are truly sorry," the company said, CNN reported.
Verizon explained that teams were working non-stop and would continue through the night until service was fully restored. The company also said it would provide account credits and share more details soon.
Later that night, Verizon confirmed that the hours-long outage had been resolved. However, the company did not explain what caused the disruption.
Customers who still noticed problems were advised to restart their devices to reconnect to the network.
Some users reported their phones were stuck in SOS mode during the outage, while others said they had no signal at all.
Verizon noted that features like Wi-Fi calling can help during service interruptions, as calls can be made over an internet connection when enabled.
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