Massive Verizon Outage Affects Local Residents
A massive network outage is affecting thousands of area residents who have Verizon as a cell phone carrier.
The outage began early Wednesday afternoon, for unknown reasons. The company has said on its Twitter page that it is working to restore service to “some customers” who are affected by it. As of 5:30 p.m., Verizon had not revealed publicly what triggered the outage or how many customers were affected, with many media outlets saying that “thousands” were impacted.
“Verizon’s team is on the ground actively working to fix today’s service issue that is impacting some customers,” the page tweeted. “We know this is a huge inconvenience, and our top priority is to get you back online and connected as fast as possible. We appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this issue.”
Verizon's team is on the ground actively working to fix today’s service issue that is impacting some customers. We know this is a huge inconvenience, and our top priority is to get you back online and connected as fast as possible. We appreciate your patience while we work to…
— Verizon News (@VerizonNews) January 14, 2026
Some frustrated customers responded by criticizing the company’s apparent lack of transparency in discussing the outage.
No outage on this scale should happen without full transparency of the root cause. This very quickly becomes a national security issue. Americans demand to know.
— Rich J (@richjayonx) January 14, 2026
Ummmmmm what do you mean some customers? It’s affecting half the country. I have critical investor calls today, and this is the worst possible timing lmao
— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) January 14, 2026
Meanwhile, others said they expect to receive a credit to their account since they were paying for service that’s unavailable.
I better see credit on my account
— Mr.Fields (@mjc_150) January 14, 2026
The website Downdetector.com, which monitors and reports on network outages, said it had received more than a million reports from individual Verizon customers about the outage Wednesday.
Downdetector’s outage heat map indicated that the Philadelphia and New York metropolitan areas were among the hardest hit, although communities around the country were affected. Officials in cities such as Washington, D.C., issued emergency alerts to residents instructing them on how to remain safe without access to their cell phones.
Many Verizon customers’ phones displayed a message that said they could be used for “emergency calls only.”
Author
