Verizon said on Thursday that it would credit $20 to customers affected by the widespread outage that disrupted cellular and data service for over six hours on Wednesday.
The outage began to draw widespread attention around 12:30 p.m. Eastern and persisted into the evening. Phones on the network displayed “SOS” in the status bar where the cellular antenna icon typically appears. A feature that allows users to make calls over Wi-Fi also appeared to be down. Some customers complained online that their service was briefly restored, only to lose it again.
The outage reached a peak of more than 170,000 concurrent reports of disrupted service early Wednesday afternoon, according to Downdetector, an outage-tracking site. Verizon, with 146.1 million subscribers in the United States, is the country’s largest mobile carrier and one of the biggest in the world.
On Thursday afternoon, Christina Moon Ashraf, a Verizon spokeswoman, blamed “a software issue” for the disruption, adding that the company was conducting a full review.
“Yesterday, we did not meet the standard of excellence our customers expect and that we expect of ourselves,” Ms. Moon Ashraf said.
She said that affected customers could log into the myVerizon app to accept a $20 account credit and that they would be notified by text message when the credit was available. That covers, on average, multiple days of service, she said, adding that business customers would be contacted directly about their credits.
“This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened,” Ms. Moon Ashraf said. “No credit really can. But it’s a way of acknowledging our customers’ time and showing that this matters to us.”
Verizon’s website said Thursday that customers still encountering problems with their service should restart their devices to reconnect to the network.
The scope of the outage was most likely wider than reported by websites that track disruptions to communications and utility services, according to Lee W. McKnight, an associate professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, who researches wireless grids.
The outage left customers frustrated from coast to coast.
Jim Garrity, a civil rights lawyer in Tallahassee, Fla., said he was questioning witnesses in an employment discrimination case on Wednesday when he lost service.
“I use my iPhone frequently to quickly search for information bearing on the witnesses’ answers while the examination is in progress,” he said. “The disruption severely interfered with my ability to conduct examinations throughout the day, and further prevented me from speaking with my client.”
He said other lawyers in his office who reported the same difficulties were unable to reach clients and, in one case, unable to participate in a video court hearing.
Nichole Gantshar, who lives in North Carolina but works for a theater in California, said that working remotely meant “my phone is my life.” She said she was able to do most of her work by using Wi-Fi, but once she stopped receiving texts, she could not do anything that required two-factor authentication.
“Many of my daily tasks were completely stopped,” she said.
Adeel Hassan, a New York-based reporter for The Times, covers breaking news and other topics.
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