Verizon outage: The network confirms it is working to restore service after numerous complaints

new York
CNN
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Verizon has confirmed an outage affecting some of its wireless customers, sparking a flood of complaints on social media about disruptions in calls, text messages and their access to the internet.

“We are aware of an issue affecting service for some customers,” a Verizon spokesperson told CNN on Monday. “Our engineers are committed and we are working quickly to identify and resolve the issue.”

The outage appeared to begin around 11 a.m. ET, with about 100,000 reports coming in from customers on DownDetector, a website that tracks complaints about service outages.

Complaints about Verizon’s verified account on Many Verizon iPhone customers complained that their phones were stuck in “SOS” mode Monday morning, only allowing emergency calls via satellite.

Verizon has 114.2 million subscribers in the United States.

Although relatively rare, disruptions to cell service have caused some headaches this year. In February, AT&T’s network was down for 11 hours, leaving many of its customers across the United States unable to make calls, text messages or access the Internet. AT&T said an initial review of the outage determined it may have been caused by a technical error caused by an update to its network. In June and August the network was down again for a few hours.

A telecommunications expert told CNN last month that network outages are typically caused by a combination of three problems: congested networks in major cities, messed up software updates and various technical problems.

However, telecommunications companies are notoriously secretive about the reasons for their outages. So if the networks go down, especially for just a few hours, the cell phone providers are unlikely to say much about what went wrong.

That can be doubly frustrating for customers, many of whom make their living on the networks, including riders. They also allow people to access emergency services like 911 on the go. And they have connected the world to friends, family and colleagues, no matter where they are.