The FCC wants to hear your Verizon outage experience
Last month, a massive outage in Verizon’s network left thousands of customers unable to make calls or use their mobile data for more than 10 hours. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is now asking the public to share how this outage impacted them, seeking feedback as part of its investigation into the incident.
Verizon Outage May Have Impacted 911 Calls
Seeking information from individuals and businesses, the FCC’s Bureau of Public Safety and Homeland Security asked the public for information about their personal experiences during the Jan. 14 Verizon outage. This includes whether Verizon customers were able to send or receive messages and calls, how long service was down and whether people on other networks were able to contact them.
In particular, the FCC wants to know if anyone had problems calling 911 during the Verizon outage. In theory, emergency calls should be able to connect to any cell tower during a network outage, ensuring that calls for help still go through. In practice, this may not have happened.
As Mashable reported at the time (cited in the FCC’s public notice), several official emergency services indicated that 911 calls might not be connected during the Verizon outage, advising people to seek help through other means. Some social media users further claimed they tried to call emergency services during the outage but were unable to connect.
Crushable speed of light
As such, the FCC would like to hear from anyone who was unable to contact 911 due to the Verizon outage, and whether any harm or injury resulted. It also seeks input from those on the other end of the line, asking first responders and governments about the impact of the Verizon outage on services and public safety.
If you would like to submit a comment, you may do so online through the FCC’s electronic comment filing system or by directly emailing a description of your Verizon outage experience to [email protected]. The FCC is accepting submissions until March 16.
The Verizon outage in January has been called one of the worst outages in the United States in the 2020s so far. The only other comparable outage was at AT&T in February 2024, which lasted at least 12 hours and caused around 25,000 emergency calls to be missed.
Australia also experienced a similar problem last September, when a massive outage at major telecommunications company Optus left customers unable to call emergency services. More than 600 emergency calls were unsuccessful during Optus’ 13-hour outage, and at least four people were confirmed to have died after contact attempts to contact help failed.
