Verizon service is down along the U.S. West Coast
UPDATE: Verizon service remains down in Washington state and in other markets along the West Coast. The wireless provider suggests that users still unable to make or take calls reboot their phones. Down Detector still notes that Verizon users are having problems with this extended outage.
The largest wireless carrier in the U.S., Verizon, suffered a major outage on Wednesday. According to Down Detector, a site that uses crowdsourced reports to acknowledge outages, Verizon subscribers started complaining about their service going down at 3:10 pm EDT as the number of complaints rose from 164 to 23,957 by 4:25 pm.
Most of the complaints logged by Verizon users originated from the West Coast of the country. Cities impacted by the outage include Los Angeles, Sacramento, Phoenix, Seattle, Las Vegas, Spokane, Denver, Tucson, and Reno. 96% of the Verizon subscribers complaining about the outage had an issue with their mobile phone while 3% had a problem with their mobile internet, and 2% were having a problem with their email.
A Verizon customer with the name Jen wrote on Down Detector about the problems she was experiencing. "Restarted my phone several times & did the airplane mode thing. Still, none of my lines are working," Jen wrote. "Most recently the message for outgoing calls is "all circuits are busy now...," she added. "My mobile phones are located from LA to the CA/OR border and into NV.. all receive text messages but no phone calls."
Verizon customers along the West Coast of the U.S. are experiencing problems with their service
Not every complaint came from the West Coast as someone using the handle acap823 had no Verizon service in Orlando, Florida since the middle of the afternoon. In Las Vegas, phone service had crapped out but users could still send and receive texts. And in Reno, Nevada, Verizon users were unable to make or take phone calls.
On social media, one Verizon customer said that those affected by the outage should reboot their phones to get them to work, but judging from the responses from those who tried that very same thing, it did not work. Meanwhile, Washington State Emergency Management sent out a tweet that said Verizon's network should be operational in the state. When? The tweet did not say.
Verizon Support sent out a tweet apologizing for the "service interruptions." And one Verizon customer with a "never say die" attitude was able to get his phone service back by doing the following: "I had to restart and then put my Android in airplane mode then turn airplane mode off and waited a minute and could make calls again!" If your Verizon service is down, try this little workaround and let us know if it helps.
Things that are NOT allowed: