Verizon announced Wednesday night that it had successfully resolved a widespread service outage that affected thousands of customers, disrupting connectivity for several hours and even hindering some local 911 calls.
“The outage has been resolved. If customers are still experiencing issues, we recommend restarting their devices to reconnect to the network,” a Verizon spokesperson conveyed in a statement to ABC News.
Earlier in the day, Verizon had assured customers that it was prepared to “work through the night” to restore full service.
In a gesture to compensate those impacted by the disruption, Verizon has promised to offer “account credits.”
According to Downdetector, a platform that monitors service disruptions, Verizon users began reporting connectivity issues around noon Eastern Time on Wednesday.
During the outage, many users took to social media to report that their phones displayed an “SOS” signal instead of the usual network bars.
According to Downdetector, at least 178,284 Verizon customers were affected at one point, but that number has since gone down.
The highest concentration of reports of Verizon problems, according to Downdetector, was in New York City, Atlanta, Charlotte and Houston.
By 3:30 p.m. Eastern time, the number of Verizon customers affected by the outage was down to less than 60,000, according to Downdetector.
In a social media post shortly after 4 p.m. ET, Verizon said a team “is on the ground actively working to fix today’s service issue that is impacting some customers.”
New York Emergency Management (NYCEM) officials said the outage was affecting some users calling 911.
“Verizon is working to solve the issue,” NYCEM said in a statement. “If you have an emergency and cannot connect using your Verizon Wireless device, please call using a device from another carrier, a landline, or go to a police precinct or fire station to report the emergency. In the meantime, you can check the website or social media account of your cellphone carrier for updates.”
Multiple law enforcement agencies have spent hours looking into the possibility that the Verizon outage could be the result of a cyberattack. But as of now, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News the belief is the outage is a technical issue and not the result of a cyberattack or some other nefarious act.
The federal government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is referring questions to Verizon.
ABC News’ Elizabeth Schulze contributed to this report.
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