On January 14, 2026, Verizon faced a catastrophic nationwide outage that left approximately 1.5 million customers without voice calling and mobile data services for over 10 hours, triggering widespread frustration and confusion across major cities in the U.S.
Customers were met with signals showing "SOS" on their devices, as they reported their inability to make calls or send texts, leading to a significant public outcry on social media and outage tracking platforms.
The company attributed the disruption to a software issue, while ruling out cyberattacks, yet many customers expressed dissatisfaction with the $20 credit offered as compensation, viewing it as inadequate for the scale of inconvenience faced.
Lawmakers, including New York Assemblywoman Linda B. Rosenthal, joined the chorus of voices demanding better compensation measures, advocating for automatic refunds for those impacted by service failures.
Amid the chaos, T-Mobile seized the opportunity to mock Verizon's misfortune, highlighting its own operational reliability and casting doubt on Verizon's service efficacy.
The outage sparked broader discussions about the accountability of telecommunications companies, intensifying scrutiny over their preparedness and response to service disruptions while raising concerns about consumer trust in essential service providers.
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