On Wednesday, while Verizon faced a widespread outage, T-Mobile seemed to thrive, informing its customers that their network was functioning just fine, even attributing the problems to their struggling competitor.
“T-Mobile’s network is keeping our customers connected, and we have verified that our network is working properly and as expected. However, due to the outages reported by Verizon, our customers may not be able to contact those with Verizon services at this time,” the company stated, pointing to Verizon’s issues.
Users of Verizon took to Downdetector to express frustration about prolonged outages that left their phones displaying SOS mode, which rendered them incapable of making calls and cut off mobile data entirely.
“I’ve been going in and out of SOS mode for the last 3 hours. Everyone in my family was fine and now they’re without power and in SOS mode,” shared one customer from Maryland.
Another upset subscriber from Mobile, Alabama, described the situation as “ridiculous,” blaming Verizon and indicating a desire to switch to a different provider.
Reports of complete outages emerged from various regions across the country.
“I’m in Dallas, Texas. It’s been almost 2 hours. Ugh!!!!,” lamented one user, while another in Waco, Texas bluntly stated, “Waco, Texas is down.”
Some customers felt the service briefly returned before collapsing again.
“Still down (2 hours now). On for a few minutes then back to SOS,” a user in Chesapeake, Virginia, noted, as another in southern New Hampshire mentioned difficulties making calls, with “SOS going in and out every few minutes.”
The outage was widespread.
Customers reported issues in states like Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas, Maine, New Jersey, and Colorado. One customer in South Texas even pointed out that their “AT&T phone is working fine” while Verizon remained down.
This disruption led to over 175,000 reports of failures on Downdetector at its peak, alongside emergency alerts in New York City and Washington, D.C., with some users struggling to reach 911.
Verizon recognized the ongoing confusion but provided little clarity on the situation.
A representative mentioned, “Verizon’s engineering team continues to address today’s service interruption. Our teams remain fully deployed and focused on the issue. We understand the impact this has on everyone’s daily lives and remain committed to resolving this issue as quickly as possible.”
Some accounts indicated that service might be slowly returning for a few, but many others were still left waiting.
