Verizon Wireless on Friday suffered a widespread outage that knocked out cellphone internet and voice service across multiple states.
An issue at one of the telecom giant’s network operation centers knocked out service in the midwestern and western states, according to a company spokeswoman. She added that engineers addressed the issue at the facility and the service was coming back online.
Reports came out of Oregon, Utah, California, Illinois, and Indiana showing various problems. Downdetector, which gathers tips on outages, saw a spike in thousands of reports starting around 2 p.m. ET, with a peak of 4,600 flags at one point. Users have flooded social media with complaints that they haven’t been able to make phone calls.
Wireless carriers will at times see service disruptions, which often are local. More rare are outages that span across multiple states.
One report warned that the outages are disrupting the ability for cellphones to call 911. The reports noted that you could still send a text message, and recommended sending a text to 911 instead. The spokeswoman, however, said that 911 service was not impacted by the outage.