Verizon says network coming back online after all-day outage for some customers
SAN JOSE, Calif. - A massive nationwide outage impacting some Verizon customers is beginning to be resolved.
In a statement issued late on Monday, Verizon said:
"Verizon engineers are making progress on our network issue and service has started to be restored. We know how much people rely on Verizon and apologize for any inconvenience some of our customers experienced today. We continue to work around the clock to fully resolve this issue."
Since early Monday morning, some Verizon customers around the nation – and right here in the Bay Area – have been without phone service. What we know is that the problem started to be reported at about 6:30 a.m. California time. Reports have continued to come in all day long.
When Nicholas Aldava tries to make a call, it simply does not go through. His phone displays the "SOS" message in the corner of his screen and he says it has been this way all day. "I just woke up and I tried to go on my phone and I saw the "SOS symbol" was on, so I tried turning it off, but I don’t know — my data is just not working. I have no bars, nothing, nowhere," Aldava said.
We met Aldava and his uncle, Gilbert, at the Diridon Station in downtown San Jose. The two share the same Verizon account and Gilbert’s phone has been working just fine. "It is crazy. You were asking about day-to-day life. He uses Uber and phone calls for rides a lot so we are really worried about that. I have no idea — it is really weird that we are all on the same account and my phone works and his does not," Gilbert Aldava said.
Inside the station we met Maria Granados who is not a Verizon customer but says she cannot reach her sister who is with Verizon. Any effort to call just fails to go through. "Well I am sure that she cannot make any calls because she cannot communicate with my mother—and they both have Verizon. So there are no calls she is able to make at the moment," Granados said.
Larry Magid, with the consumer group ConnectSafely, has been following technology for decades. He says while we may never be prepared for such outages, there are workarounds as he personally experienced during an earlier visit to New York.
"Well when I was in New York, what I did because I urgently needed to get a message across I darted into a building that I knew had public Wi-Fi and I jumped onto their Wi-Fi network so that’s a good thing to know where there is public Wi-Fi because once you are on a Wi-Fi network most of the things you can do on your phone you can do through Wi-Fi instead of through cellular," Magid said.
KTVU did check in with some of the emergency services:
The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department says its communications systems are not impacted and advises anyone needing to reach emergency services to find a landline. Similarly, San Jose Fire Department says its systems are operational and a department spokesperson points out you can still call 9-1-1 even if your phone says "SOS."
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