Unauthorized shutdown reportedly caused Verizon outage as service is "fully" restored

UPDATE:Verizon has "fully restored" service which was out across much of the country earlier today. According to an unconfirmed message on DownDetector by someone claiming to be a "tech tier 2" rep at Verizon, the outage was caused by an unauthorized shutdown of the electrical grid targeted at cell towers all across the U.S. The shutdown was done "slowly and systematically" according to the post.

The complete part of that message states, "It has been confirmed that the issue was caused by an unauthorized shut down of the electrical grid specifically targeted at the cell towers all across the US, It seems to have been done by slowly and systematically shutting down these lines, sort of like a spider building its web. At first, it was just local, then state, region, and now nationwide. Affecting not only Verizon, but other carriers as well, to a smaller capacity as they were just subs on the main Verizon towers."

Take the above message with a grain of salt as it has not been confirmed by Verizon. The carrier did announce that service has been "fully restored" via a Tweet.

The original story follows:

Some customers of the nation's largest wireless provider, Verizon, are beginning to get service back after an issue with the network prevented subscribers from making and taking phone calls, texting, and connecting to the internet. The outage started at approximately 9 am ET (6 am PT) this morning and while DownDetector still says that "user reports indicate problems at Verizon," CNN is reporting that Verizon engineers are making some headway in getting service restored.

Many iPhone users on the Verizon network had their devices stuck on SOS mode with those three letters appearing on the status bar of affected iPhone models. If you see those letters on your iPhone, it means that the device is not connected to your cellular network but emergency calls can still be made. Verizon has 114.2 million subscribers in the U.S. and not all of them were affected by the outage. Many Verizon users that yours truly spoke with today had regular service throughout the entire day.

On DownDetector, the number of complaints from Verizon customers soared from 205 at 9:22 am ET to a peak of 104,440 just two hours later. At 6:52 pm ET, the number of complaints had fallen to 3,637 which is still indicative of an outage according to the website. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) threw its 2 cents into the situation when it posted a message on "X" this afternoon that said, "We're aware of a Verizon outage impacting customers in parts of the country. We are working to determine the cause and extent of these service disruptions."

While service is being restored in some areas, it is still out for many. A Verizon customer in Peoria, Arizona said at 7:22 pm ET that his service was still down even though Indiana was back on at 7:11 pm ET. At the same time, Santa Cruz, California also regained service. While LTE connectivity is available in New Mexico, 5G service remains down in that region.

We will continue to monitor the situation and will update this story if there are any changes. Check back often!