Verizon Wireless Outage Leaves Thousands Without Service in Arizona

On Monday, thousands of Verizon Wireless customers across Arizona woke up to find themselves without cell service. A widespread outage affected the cell provider, leaving many unable to make calls, send texts, or access the internet.

While the exact cause of the outage is still unknown, tech experts believe there are two possible explanations. Brandon Disney from Data Doctors suggests that either an update went wrong, causing a network issue, or Verizon’s network may have been targeted by hackers.

“One possibility is some kind of human error, where an update meant to improve network speeds or functionality went awry,” Disney explained. “The second possibility is a deliberate attack on Verizon’s network, although this is less likely.”

Verizon users reported seeing an ‘SOS’ icon on their smartphones, indicating that their devices were searching for alternative ways to connect to the internet during the outage.

According to Downdetector, over 100,000 people in the U.S. reported experiencing the outage, with over 5,000 affected in Phoenix alone. Disney believes the actual number of impacted individuals is likely higher than reported.

While network outages like this are not common, Disney advises against immediately switching to a different carrier due to this incident. He notes that Verizon’s last major outage of this scale occurred in 2012.

In response to the network issues, a Verizon spokesperson stated, “Verizon engineers are making progress on our network issue and service has started to be restored. We know how much people rely on Verizon and apologize for any inconvenience some of our customers experienced today. We continue to work around the clock to fully resolve this issue.”