Verizon said of the outage, “We are truly sorry for disappointing many customers.”
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.
Some questions remain about the cause of Verizon’s hours-long outage that affected cell phone service for more than 1 million customers on January 14th.
Service was fully restored after 10pm ET on Wednesday, January 14th, approximately 10 hours after some customers began noticing their phones going into SOS-only mode.
Downdetector is an outage tracking aggregator. It was reported that the above On January 14, 1.5 million Verizon customers experienced wireless and data outages.
“We are truly sorry for disappointing so many of our customers today,” Verizon said in a statement shared with X.
The company did not provide further details about the extent of the disruption. above On January 15th, Verizon also announced that it would be issued. Those affected by the disability will receive a $20 credit.
What caused the Verizon outage?
A Verizon spokesperson told USA TODAY that the outage was related to a software issue and that the company is “thoroughly investigating what happened.” The company said there is no indication that a cyberattack may have been the cause.
Outages for cell phone service providers like Verizon are not uncommon, but they usually vary in scope. For example, in August 2025, approximately 11,000 customers reported what Verizon described as a “software-related” outage.
A similarly widespread Verizon outage in September 2024 affected more than 100,000 people and was reportedly investigated by the Federal Communications Commission.
Several factors can cause cell phone service outages
According to Verizon’s website, mobile network outages like the one that occurred on January 14 are “unanticipated disruptions that simultaneously disrupt service to many mobile sites.”
According to Verizon competitor AT&T, mobile network outages can have several causes, including technical glitches, server failures, infrastructure damage, and cyberattacks.
How to get a $20 Verizon credit
Verizon announced it would issue a $20 credit to customers affected by the outage.
Credits can be redeemed in the myVerizon app and customers will receive a text message when they are available.
“This credit is not meant to make up for what happened. It can’t really be credited. But this is a way to acknowledge your time and show that this is important to us,” Verizon said.
Contributed by Jonathan Limehouse, Mike Snider, James Powel, USA TODAY
Melina Khan is USA TODAY’s national trends reporter. Contact her at melina.khan@usatoday.com.
This story has been updated with additional information.
