Is Verizon Down? Wireless Outages Reported Across the U.S.

Verizon appeared to suffer significant connection issues early on Monday morning, with reports people could not get service.

The wireless service provider started to suffer major issues at around 12 a.m. ET on Tuesday with a spike of outages reported to website and service tracker DownDetector.

According to the website, the majority of reported connection issues happened in New York City and Minneapolis, although there were cases all across the U.S.

People complained they could not get a signal on their cell phones and that they could not access the internet.

One user wrote: "No mobile 4g or 3g signal Melbourne Florida. Just crashed and still can't get it to load up websites."

Another said: "Ok. I didn't know if my s9+ went to 3g when 4g dropped. but my 4g went blank then came back but really spotty now. can't even get a YouTube video to load."

An additional commenter posted: "Out for a while like wtf? No one has house phones anymore! Let's get moving."

As of Tuesday morning, Verizon had not released an official statement about the outages, although its support team has been handling complaints from users.

Concerned users can also access information about what to do during an outage on the Verizon website.

In the section "tips to fix issues with your service," the provider recommends users reboot their routers, reset their ONT battery and check to see whether they are experiencing a service outage.

Users can sign into the website in the case of an outage where they will "be assigned a ticket with the estimated time your service will be restored."

A Verizon spokesperson told Newsweek: "Last night, a truck accident caused a fiber cut to one of our vendor partners, which led to a disruption in service for some customers in Upstate New York. That fiber cut was fixed overnight and service has been restored.

"Please know there is not, nor was there, a broadscale outage anywhere in the country. Also, it's important to point out that sites such as downdetector.com use limited crowd-sourced data drawn from sample social posts, which are often statistically insignificant or incorrect.

The spokesperson added: "A lot of factors can contribute to these errors: faulty devices, network traffic that slows but doesn't inhibit connections, commercial RF blockers, human error, malicious intent, and more.

"However, these types of sites do not evaluate and confirm the crowd-sourced data they receive; they simply aggregate it and report it. The result can be faulty reports of network performance interruptions, causing widespread misinformation for wireless users."

Verizon is one of the largest communications technology companies in the world. It has more than 120 million subscribers and generated revenues of $128.3 billion in 2020, according to its website.

Earlier this year the provider was among several businesses to fall victim to a suspected Chinese hack.

Verizon later said the hack was dealt with quickly and that no customer data or information had been accessed or stolen.

Company spokesperson Rich Young said in June: "We know that bad actors try to compromise our systems. That is why internet operators, private companies and all individuals need to be vigilant in this space."

While China was suspected to be behind the hack, the government in Beijing denied having any role in the cyber attack.