WASHINGTON, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Verizon Communications said late on Wednesday it had restoredmobile phone service and planned to offer affected consumers credits for a 10-hour outage that disrupted calls, texting and internet usage for hundreds of thousands of customers.
"Today, we let many of our customers down and for that, we are truly sorry," Verizon said. "The outage has been resolved. If customers are still having an issue, we encourage them to restart their devices to reconnect to the network.For those affected, we will provide account credits."
Verizon added that "if customers are still having an issue, we encourage them to restart their devices to reconnect to the network."
The outage promptedseveral major cities to advise residents to use other carriers to call emergency services.
Verizon did not disclose the scope of the disruption or the cause of the outage, but said there was no indication of a cyberattack.
Downdetector, which aggregates data on service outages, said it had received 2.2 million reports over the last 24 hours related to the Verizon service disruption.
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr told Reuters after a congressional hearing that the agency would review the issue "and take appropriate action." Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said she would ask the agency to investigate.
New York City told residents the outage could affect some users trying to call 911 for emergency help. "Call using a device from another carrier, a landline, or go to a police/fire station to report emergencies," the city said on X. The District of Columbia issued a similar alert.
Some Verizon customers posted frantic messages on social media seeking updates on service restoration.
Verizon faced a nationwide wireless outage in late 2024 that affected more than 100,000 users at its peak. The outage drew the FCC's attention after several services were affected and iPhone users were stuck in "SOS" mode.
Many users on Wednesday reported the same issue about phones in "SOS" mode.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Cynthia Osterman and Jamie Freed)
