In the midst of a widespread service disruption affecting Verizon Wireless customers in the United States, the company is facing a deluge of angry customers on social media.
The company has made a series of statements about the outage, which is ongoing as of this writing.
But what caused the Verizon outage that affected so many mobile customers all over the country? While Verizon hasn’t issued any statements addressing the cause, we’ll provide more information as it becomes available. In the meantime, here’s everything we know so far.
The Verizon service outage cause: What we know
Starting around 11:55 a.m. ET, the platform Downdetector started to receive a spike in user error reports from Verizon customers. Error reports peaked around 12:45 p.m. ET, when Downdetector received “178,284 concurrent reports” within a 15-minute period.” So far, the platform has received more than 1.7 million error reports. (Disclosure: Downdetector and Mashable are both owned by Ziff Davis.)
Mashable reporters reached out to Verizon with questions about the outage, but the company has yet to say anything concrete about the source of the problem.
Verizon support hints at phone bill ‘discount’ for outage
Instead, the company responded with the same statements it’s posted to its website and social media platforms. The statements thank customers for their patience and promise that Verizon engineering teams “remain fully deployed” to address the issue.
A recent statement on X reads:
“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 resolve this issue.”
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At this time, it’s not clear where on the ground Verizon is working, or what they’re working on.
Verizon outage cause: What we don’t know
Global mobile networks involve a vast infrastructure, and we don’t yet know which part of Verizon’s telecommunications system has malfunctioned. It’s also possible that the outage is caused by a third-party contractor or vendor that works with Verizon.
Likewise, we don’t know if the outage was caused by a software problem, hardware problem, or both, though Verizon has blamed previous outages on software problems.
Mashable reported on several major internet outages in 2025. Typically, the companies responsible for an outage provide an initial update the day of the disruption, followed by a more in-depth report in the weeks ahead.
We will update this story as we learn more about the outage.
Verizon Wireless outage timeline
Verizon experienced a major service disruption on Wednesday, Jan. 14, with confused customers taking to social media to report that their phones were suddenly stuck in SOS mode.
The outage began around noon ET, and Verizon quickly acknowledged the outage in a statement posted on X; a Verizon spokesperson also provided the same statement to Mashable reporters.
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By the evening, some customers reported restored service, though many customers on social media still complained of ongoing problems. While the service was down, many angry Verizon customers criticized the company in social media posts.
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This isn’t the first time Verizon customers have experienced an outage.
In September 2025 (and again in October 2025), thousands of Verizon mobile customers experienced brief outages, which Verizon eventually attributed to software issues. A service disruption in 2024 also sent some Verizon customers’ phones into SOS mode.
