Verizon outage affects customers nationwide, with over 1.5 million reports
Verizon Wireless customers in multiple cities, including New York, Charlotte, Houston and Atlanta, were affected by power outages into Wednesday night.
Verizon announced that the nearly 10-hour outage across the United States on January 14th has been resolved.
The wireless carrier said in a statement to X late Wednesday that it had “disappointed many customers” and promised to provide account credits to affected customers.
Verizon said credit details will be shared directly with customers.
The outage began around 12:30 p.m. ET, resulting in more than 1.5 million Verizon customers reporting wireless and data outages, according to Downdetector. The number of reports exceeded the Verizon outage that occurred on August 30, 2025, making it one of the largest outages of 2025, according to the real-time tracking website.
The event spread across the United States, with reported concentrations in New York City, Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, and Brooklyn, New York, according to Down Detector.
Verizon did not specify the extent of the disruption, but said it saw no signs of a cyberattack. Internet monitoring company Cisco ThousandEyes called the event “one of the most significant nationwide connectivity outages in recent memory” in a memo to USA TODAY.
The outage prompted several major cities to advise residents to use other carriers to call emergency services.
“We understand how important reliable connectivity is and apologize for any inconvenience,” the company said in an earlier statement about the X.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr told Reuters after a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, January 14, that the agency will review the failure and “take appropriate action.”
