Customers of Verizon experienced a nationwide service outage, which lasted for nearly six hours, disrupting the daily lives of customers on September 30.
Major media outlets reported that Verizon cell phone outages were seen nationwide including Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago.
Downdetector, a website that tracks carrier outages, reported that the Verizon service outages began at around 8 a.m. on September 30, with more than 100,000 outages being reported at once.
Verizon users couldn’t make phone calls, text, or browse the internet, due to dropped cell phone signals, unstable internet speeds, and even worse showing SOS mode in areas where there is no signal at all.
The cell phone outage also occurred in Koreatown in Los Angeles, which led to complaints to Verizon’s branch offices.
At the Verizon store on the second floor of the Galleria Market on Olympic Boulevard in Koreatown, a sign on the entrance read, “There is currently no phone or internet service due to a carrier-wide system issue. We are working to resolve the issue and will be back online as soon as possible.”
“About 80 percent of Verizon customers nationwide were affected by the outage,” said a representative at the store.
Cell phone outages also took their toll. “I can’t get a taxi home because I can’t use my cell phone,” said a man in his 60s at the Verizon store, ”and I can’t even browse the internet properly, even though I’m trying to find other alternatives.”
Services using mobile phone applications were also limited. “I used the app in the drive-through at McDonald’s this morning to buy a coffee, but my phone didn’t work at all,” said Seonkyung Lee, ”so I had to go into the store and connect to the Wi-Fi, just to buy a cup of coffee.”
Cell service began to return later that afternoon. “Verizon engineers are making progress on our network issue and service has started to be restored,” the company said on X (formerly Twitter) around 2 p.m.
However, the company did not specify what caused the outage.
Some AT&T and T-Mobile users also experienced signal and internet outages on the same day. Some reported that the outages at both carriers appeared to have occurred in Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee, where Hurricane Helene recently passed through.
BY KYEONGJUN KIM, HOONSIK WOO [kim.kyeongjun1@koreadaily.com]
