Verizon outage affects nearly 200,000 cell phones across US

LOS ANGELES – Tens of thousands of Verizon wireless customers encountered a widespread outage Wednesday, disrupting calling and other cellular services in Southern California and across the nation.

According to the outage-tracking site Downdetector, nearly 200,000 people had reported outages as of midday, although the impact was likely far greater.

The site identified the Los Angeles area as one of the regions showing a particularly high number of reported problems among users.

Major cities hard hit

Cities such as New York,

In a statement posted on social media, Verizon said its “engineering teams are continuing to address today’s service interruptions. Our teams remain fully deployed and are focused on the issue. We understand the impact this has on your day and remain committed to resolving this as quickly as possible.”

There was no immediate word on the cause of the outage or when it might be resolved.

A handful of outage reports for other carriers also bubbled up on Wednesday — but companies like T-Mobile and AT&T quickly confirmed online that their services were operating normally. Both suggested that their customers may be encountering issues contacting people with Verizon’s service, however.

When cellular outages happen, some phone companies also urge consumers to try to connect to Wi-Fi and use internet calling. If Wi-Fi is still unavailable, there can be a limited number of other options — including sending messages via satellite on newer iPhones. (With CNS and AP reports)

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