Verizon, the Telecom giant, faced a nationwide outage this morning, leaving millions of customers unable to make calls or send texts. The outage began around 9:30 a.m. ET and affected customers from the Midwest to as far west as Colorado and as far north as Minnesota. However, it primarily centered in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and parts of Kentucky.
According to DownDetector, a website that monitors internet service disruptions, more than 105,000 outage reports flooded in during a single 15-minute time slot around 11 a.m. Half of those reports mentioned mobile phone internet outages while 14 percent reported a total blackout.
Verizon acknowledged the issue and stated that their engineers were working quickly to identify and solve it. However, they did not disclose how many people were affected by the outage or what caused it. It is unclear whether this widespread malfunction is related to the damage caused by Hurricane Helene.
The aftermath of Hurricane Helene has resulted in significant damage and massive flooding in parts of Georgia Tennessee and the Carolinas. These conditions have made it challenging for Verizon technicians to carry out necessary repairs and set up generators.
To address this situation temporarily until permanent fiber connections can be restored by technicians on-site Verizon has deployed over 20 mobile satellite assets. Additionally twenty-one more satellite assets are expected to be installed in the coming days with collaboration from local power providers telecom providers first responders local officials state officials.
Verizon aims to bring relief to thousands of customers who heavily rely on their mobile devices especially during these challenging times due to Hurricane Helene’s impact on connectivity services.
At present Verizon has not provided an estimated time for when users can expect their cell service to return back normal following today’s sudden nationwide outage.
