By David Shepardson
Jan 15 (Reuters) – Verizon Communications said on Thursday it is offering a $20 credit to hundreds of thousands of customers impacted by its 10-hour outage on Wednesday that the U.S. wireless company said was caused by a software issue.
Verizon said the issue primarily impacted customers in the northeast, southern California, Texas and pockets of the Midwest and was not the result of a cyberattack. The issue was resolved around 10 p.m. EST (0300 GMT) Wednesday.
The Federal Communications Commission said it would review the outage.
“We did not meet the standard of excellence our customers expect and that we expect of ourselves. To help provide some relief to those affected, we are giving customers a $20 account credit,” Verizon said.
The company added “if customers are still experiencing issues, we encourage them to restart their devices to reconnect to the network.”
The outage prompted several major cities to advise residents to use other carriers to call emergency services. Downdetector, which aggregates data on service outages, said late Wednesday it had received 2.2 million reports over the last 24 hours related to the Verizon service disruption.
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr told Reuters after a congressional hearing that the agency would review the issue “and take appropriate action”.
New York City told residents the outage could affect some users trying to call 911 for emergency help. “Call using a device from another carrier, a landline, or go to a police/fire station to report emergencies,” the city said on X.
The District of Columbia issued a similar alert. The warnings were dropped after operations resumed normally.
Verizon faced a nationwide wireless outage in late 2024 that affected more than 100,000 users at its peak. The outage drew the FCC’s attention after several services were affected and iPhone users were stuck in “SOS” mode. Many users on Wednesday reported the same issue about phones in “SOS” mode.
(Reporting by Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru and David Shepardson in Detroit;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
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