Verizon To Offer Credits After Major NY Outage: What To Know, How To Get It

NEW YORK — Verizon said the company plans to "make it right" with millions of customers, including many in New York, who were unable to use their phones for most of the day due to a massive outage Wednesday.

The company acknowledged the inconvenience the outage caused to more than 1.5 million customers who were unable to make calls and send or receive text messages for about 10 hours Wednesday. Their phones displayed “SOS only.”

The company said in a statement that customers affected in the outage will get a credit on their bills. “Details will be shared directly with customers,” Verizon said. “We sincerely apologize for the disruption.”

Verizon addressed the issue with a post on X Wednesday afternoon: "We are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers. Our engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly. We understand how important reliable connectivity is and apologize for the inconvenience."

Downdetector, which lists user-submitted reports of outages, indicated that thousands of users were impacted Wednesday afternoon. Many turned to social media and reported seeing "SOS" on their phones.

Verizon updated customers throughout the day as its engineers worked to correct the outage, which the internet monitoring company Cisco ThousandEyes told USA Today was "one of the most significant connectivity interruptions in recent memory."

"Today, we let many of our customers down and for that, we are truly sorry. They expect more from us," the company said in one message on X. "We will make this right."

Verizon didn’t say what caused the outage, but said there was no indication of a cyberattack.

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr told Reuters after a congressional hearing Wednesday that the agency will review the outage "and take appropriate action."