Verizon has acknowledged a widespread service outage affecting wireless customers Monday in several major U.S. cities.
“We are aware of an issue impacting service for some customers,” the telco said in a statement. “Our engineers are engaged and we are working quickly to identify and solve the issue.”
Customers in cities like New York, Atlanta, Chicago and Phoenix reported trouble on Verizon earlier Monday. Devices were reportedly displaying the “SOS” message indicating an inability to facilitate voice calls or text messages.
AT&T, meanwhile, affirmed that its network was up and running, despite indications of a problem on the website Down Detector, which tracks service outages across the internet.
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“We are not experiencing a nationwide outage,” AT&T said in a statement posted on its social media accounts. “Our national network is operating normally. Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers are having attempting to connect to users on another network.”
Down Detector started receiving reports from thousands of affected users just after 10 a.m. ET on Monday.
As of June 30, Verizon had 114.2 million retail wireless connections, including 92 million retail postpaid ones.
Customers flocked to social media to complain about the disruption. On X, formerly Twitter, Verizon was the No. 1 trending topic in the U.S. at mid-day.
The wireless sector has been generating news throughout the day Monday, with EchoStar earlier announcing it has sold off its Dish Network video subsidiary to DirecTV. EchoStar has been repositioning itself to try to take a run at the wireless business over the past several years, acquiring spectrum as well as assets from Sprint that the company had to surrender as part of its merger with T-Mobile.
