Verizon Nationwide Outage Resolved

ACROSS AMERICA — A nationwide Verizon outage that resulted in the loss of service for thousands of customers Wednesday morning has since been resolved, according to Verizon and several local government agencies.

"Our engineers have resolved an issue that caused intermittent call failures from cell phone users to some business landline numbers earlier this morning," a Verizon spokesperson said in a statement to Patch around 10:45 a.m.

Downdetector listed a massive spike in outage reports beginning around 6:42 a.m. Wednesday and peaking at 8:42 a.m.—with more than 2,600 reports—before beginning to decrease again.

As of around 10:10 a.m., many local officials began to report that service in their area has been restored.

The largest number of Verizon outage reports came from Philadelphia, Wayne, New Jersey, Baltimore, New York City, Chicago, Washington D.C., and Boston, according to Downdetector.

During the outage, many local police departments said that 911 still worked, but could only be used in an emergency. Non-emergency police lines were down in some affected areas.

Other police departments said that 911 might be down as well and suggested anyone needing assistance try texting 911 or calling their non-emergency police line.

New York State Thruway Authority said on X, formerly known as Twitter, at 9:15 a.m. that due to the outage, the Thruway's non-emergency numbers were not working properly for Verizon customers and that anyone needing roadside assistance or to report an emergency should text or call 911. The Thruway was informed by Verizon around 10:19 a.m. that the outage has been resolved, the agency said.

"About the outage, our engineers are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it quickly," Verizon Support said in a tweet at 9:48 a.m. in response to a customer comment.