Verizon said thousands of people who were affected nationwide by a massive outage now have service back.

If your Verizon-backed phone was out most of yesterday or even still down today, you weren’t alone. The company said the blackout was caused by a “software issue” but did not respond to a request to elaborate on what exactly that meant.

Verizon officials assured customers that their engineers were actively engaged in diagnosing and resolving the service disruption. By early evening, the company announced that service was beginning to stabilize in affected regions.

According to Downdetector data, most networks in the New York City, Houston, Chicago, Seattle, the Bay Area, and other major urban centers had been restored by 7:30 p.m. PDT, though a residual few hundred reports of outages persisted nationwide into midnight.

Users were not happy about Verizon’s outage

The company advised customers to monitor their network status online for updates.

Verizon officials emphasized that their engineering teams were actively engaged in diagnosing and resolving the widespread service outage that impacted thousands of customers across the United States.

In a statement released Saturday afternoon, the company assured affected users that corrective measures were underway and that efforts to restore normal service were a top priority.

“Our engineers are engaged and we are working quickly to identify and solve the issue,” Verizon said, as it scramble to assuage customers amid mounting frustration on social media.

By early evening, Verizon reported signs of progress, with service beginning to stabilize in key affected regions.

According to the company, network restoration efforts had started to yield positive results, particularly in metropolitan areas where the outage had been most severe.

Despite the progress, the company acknowledged that some users continued to experience issues, and reports of outages persisted into the late evening hours.

What the heck happened

The outage was first reported around midday, with thousands of customers taking to social media to complain about their phones being stuck in “SOS” mode since Saturday morning.

Many users expressed frustration over the slow pace of Verizon’s response, with some criticizing the company for not providing more timely and transparent updates.

The outage appeared to be concentrated in densely populated urban centers, where mobile connectivity is critical for both personal and professional communication.

Verizon’s spokesperson advised customers to check their network status online and provided reassurance that service restoration was ongoing. The company noted that efforts to identify and rectify the underlying software issue were still in progress, and that they expected further improvements in the coming hours.

By midnight, reports indicated that only a few hundred users nationwide were still experiencing service disruptions, suggesting that Verizon’s technicians were making significant headway in their recovery efforts.

Overall, the outage underscored the vulnerabilities inherent in even the most sophisticated telecommunications networks, and highlighted the importance of rapid, transparent communication during service disruptions.

Customers and industry observers alike will be watching closely to see how Verizon manages similar incidents in the future, particularly in terms of response times and customer service.