Verizon customers across the United States reported losing mobile or internet coverage in the early hours of Friday morning.
Newsweek contacted Verizon for comment via email on Friday outside of regular office hours.
Why It Matters
According to Verizon, the company was providing 146.1 million wireless retail connections, as well as 10.4 million broadband connections, at the end of June 2025, making it one of the biggest mobile and broadband providers in the United States. Friday’s outage had the potential to impact a large number of businesses and private households, though the impact would be mitigated as the worst of the outage took place in the middle of the night.
What To Know
According to Downdetector, a website that monitors service provision failures, the number of outage reports exploded from 83 at 11:50 a.m. ET on Thursday to 7,531 at 0:20 a.m. ET on Friday. It then fell back to 3,169 at 1:35 a.m. ET and 760 at 2:05 a.m., though this was still considerably above the baseline for this time of 35.
At 3:30 a.m. the number of outage reports had fallen to 314, against a baseline for that time of day of 29. By 9:07 a.m. this had fallen to 306.
A map produced by Downdetector saw outage reports all over the U.S. with particularly big concentrations in New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C., Detroit and Minneapolis. Among those also impacted were users in Atlanta, Houston, San Francisco, Phoenix and Seattle.
Of those reporting issues with their Verizon service as of 2:45 a.m. ET, 52 percent said they had an issue with their mobile phone, 40 percent said they’d lost signal and 8 percent reported issues with their 5G home internet.
Some Verizon customers also experienced a brief loss of connection on October 9, when the number of outages reported peaked at 1,244 at 0:56 a.m. ET according to Downdetector.
Speaking to Newsweek after the previous incident, a Verizon spokesperson said: “Some Verizon customers in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area may have experienced a brief service interruption in the early morning hours Thursday. Engineers were able to identify and quickly resolve the issue.”
Separately in June Verizon announced an upgrade that included providing customers with access to a Customer Champion and AI assistant, capable of providing updates via app, text or phone call.
In January Verizon started paying out settlements in response to a $100 million class action lawsuit which said that in 2023 customers had been subject to an additional “administrative charge” which plaintiffs said was “never adequately or honestly disclosed.”
What People Are Saying
Posting on Downdetector one man, who said he was a Verizon customer, said: “Out in Jackson MI. Tried to contact support. They won’t talk to me unless I verify the number they sent me by text, which I can’t get because they’re down. I’m connected to my car’s cellular signal, which is ATT. They’re not down.”
Another person commented: “Home internet went down around 12:15am in Novi, MI. Power cycling the router doesn’t resolve. Glad I don’t have Verizon mobile.”
A third joked: “I should have stuck with 2 tin cans and some string.”
Later another Downdetector poster said: “Mine just came back on. So random though, and never had both my phone and internet just flatline like that. Makes me concerned how easily communications overall can be cut off.”
What Happens Next
As of 4 a.m. ET on Friday the number of Verizon outages reported to Downdetector had fallen dramatically from its peak and was on a continued downward trajectory.
Update 10/17/25, 9:28 a.m. ET: This story has been updated to include the latest Downdetector figures for Verizon outages.
