- Verizon dealt with two separate network disruptions over the weekend
- The carrier didn’t provide details on the cause of Saturday’s outage that affected voice services
- Sunday’s troubles were blamed on vandals who cut multiple fiber cables
It was a busy weekend for Verizon engineers thanks to an outage that affected voice services for thousands of customers in some parts of the U.S. on Saturday.
Verizon didn’t reveal the cause of the outage but said the issue was resolved by around 4 p.m. Pacific time. At the time, the carrier advised customers who were still experiencing problems to restart their devices.
The company didn’t respond to Fierce’s inquiry about the number of customers affected or origin of the problem, which appeared to be mostly confined to the aforementioned voice services.
That wasn’t the end of Verizon’s network problems. On Sunday, the company blamed vandals for cutting multiple fiber cables that caused service disruptions for mobile and internet customers in parts of Southern California.
Law enforcement officers were involved in that incident, which was resolved by 7:30 p.m. Pacific on Sunday, according to the carrier.
Verizon’s network, customer focus
Some customers complained on social media that the event on Saturday marked the second major outage under CEO Dan Schulman, who abruptly took over from former CEO Hans Vestberg in October.
In January, Verizon blamed a massive, 10-hour nationwide outage on a “software issue.” The operator issued credits to customers who were affected by that.
Since then, Schulman has insisted that Verizon still has the “best network,” but he’s acknowledged that the differential is less than it used to be and emphasized Verizon’s need to get back to satisfying its customers’ needs above all else.
Customer complaints stack up
This weekend’s outage didn’t help its cause on either front, with customers on social media saying how “Starlink cell service can’t come soon enough,” and how it wasn’t that long ago that Verizon tried to “throw stones” at T-Mobile when it had an outage.
Indeed, Verizon used social media to let people know that it was not experiencing any problems on July 27, when T-Mobile had an outage that affected customers from coast to coast.
“Our network is operating normally nationwide. If you're having trouble reaching someone, it may be due to the reported outage on T-Mobile's network,” Verizon told consumers last month.
On Saturday, T-Mobile returned the “favor,” letting consumers know on X that: “Our network is operating normally. We are seeing signs of an issue affecting another wireless provider that may impact T-Mobile customers’ ability to reach people on that network. We are continuing to watch the situation for our customers.”
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