Thousands of Verizon VZ customers reported mobile phone outages in New York, Boston and other parts of the East Coast Friday.
According to published reports, the company said intermittent issues prevented some customers from placing or answering phone calls, but a Verizon Communications spokesman told several news outlets that text and data services had not been affected. The company has not released information about the cause of the outages.
“We’re aware of intermittent issues that are preventing some customers from making or receiving phone calls,” Verizon spokesman Andrew Testa said in an email to the Washington Post. “Our network teams are in the process of restoring service as quickly as possible.”
According to monitoring site DownDetector.com, reported Verizon outages started spiking afternoon Eastern Friday and rose to about 13,500 outages in a couple of hours. DownDetector says about 85% of the reports said mobile phone service, not internet and data, was affected.
Verizon is the largest wireless carrier in the U.S. The company reported having more than 142 million subscribers at the end of 2021.
