Home / Technology / Verizon Outage: Millions Offline, 911 Calls Threatened
Verizon Outage: Millions Offline, 911 Calls Threatened
16 Jan
Summary
- An outage impacted over 1.5 million Verizon customers' phone services.
- Experts warn such outages pose significant risks to safety and healthcare.
- Verizon apologized and will offer credits to affected customers.
Millions of Verizon Wireless customers experienced a widespread outage on January 14, disrupting essential services for nearly 10 hours. The failure impacted users in major cities including New York, Charlotte, Houston, and Atlanta, leaving over 1.5 million without access to calls, texts, or network data. Verizon has since apologized for the disruption and announced it will offer credits to affected customers, stating there is no indication of a cyberattack being the cause.
Experts are increasingly warning that such technological failures are not rare events but routine risks in our interconnected world. These outages can have dangerous consequences, affecting everything from emergency services like 911 to critical healthcare systems and financial transactions. The article references past major outages, including those involving Cloudflare in November 2025 and CrowdStrike in 2024, highlighting the fragility of modern infrastructure.
In light of these vulnerabilities, experts advise both individuals and companies to prepare for future disruptions. This includes having offline methods for essential tasks and for businesses, investing in redundant service providers and backup systems. The Verizon outage serves as a stark reminder of our reliance on constant connectivity and the potential cascading impacts when that connection is lost.
