News: 0175161277

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Verizon Cellphone Users Report Outages Across the US

(Monday September 30, 2024 @05:20PM (msmash) from the can-you-hear-me dept.)


Thousands of Verizon users across the United States reported having [1]little or no cellphone service on Monday morning in major cities, including in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, New York and Phoenix. From a report:

> According to the website Downdetector, which tracks user reports of internet disruptions, more than 104,000 cases of Verizon outages were reported across the country as of 11:20 a.m. Eastern, more than an hour after the first issues were reported.

>

> A map posted on the site showed cities with the most reports. On the site, many users said their cellphones were intermittently displaying SOS mode and that they could not place calls or send or receive text messages. "We're aware of the issue affecting service for some customers," a spokesman for Verizon, Ilya Hemlin, said in a telephone interview at 11:30 a.m. "Our engineers are engaged and we are working quickly to solve the issue," he added.



[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/business/verizon-outages-us.html



Question (Score:2)

by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 )

Is this happening more regularly? Or am I just paying more attention to it because I'm irrationally paranoid of cyberattacks leading up to the election?

Re:Question (Score:4, Informative)

by korgitser ( 1809018 )

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Re: (Score:2)

by LazarusQLong ( 5486838 )

a great engineer at my place of work once tried to teach me that lesson, but I knew too many managers so I didn't take to it well...

Re: (Score:2)

by omnichad ( 1198475 )

While true, a lot of times the stupidity allows someone else's malice. But it just gets treated as an "outage" and you never find out it was a DDOS or breach until months/years later.

Re: (Score:2)

by Malay2bowman ( 10422660 )

Because they don't want to scare investors or the public. It's always money.

Re: (Score:2)

by korgitser ( 1809018 )

More often the stupidity tries to save face with a coverup by pointing the finger to some supposed malice. To which one should say - pics or didn't happen, lest one become an enabler of stupid.

Re: (Score:2)

by gweihir ( 88907 )

In IT Security, that is a very common pattern. Especially when the attackers want to spy and hence try to stay unnoticed.

Re:Question (Score:4, Funny)

by drfuchs ( 599179 )

I attribute it to malloc().

Re: (Score:2)

by Darinbob ( 1142669 )

Never attribute to malloc what can be adequately explained by sudo.

Re: (Score:2)

by radarskiy ( 2874255 )

Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

Re:Question (Score:4, Interesting)

by crunchy_one ( 1047426 )

Looking at the heat map at DownDetector, my first guess would be that fiber links were severed by Helene and that Verizon is causing routing failures by trying and failing to work around the severed links.

Re: (Score:2)

by blastard ( 816262 )

It will be interesting to see if you are correct.

This would not happen if the providers operated the way they did some 20 years ago. Your phone would try to connect to your carrier first, but would fail back to other carriers, so that as long as there was compatible signals, you could connect. Of course, you might end up paying for roaming, but at least you were connected. Carriers didn't like paying exchange fees, and always thought someone else was profiting off them, so they worked to shut this down.

Re: (Score:2)

by techno-vampire ( 666512 )

That can't be all of the reason, or even most of it. I live in Trinidad, CO and my Verizon service went down this morning. I had to go to Pueblo, CO, for a medical appointment and there was no connectivity anywhere along the way, or in Pueblo, causing me to miss my appointment because my GPS couldn't work. If this was all caused by Helene, it's hard to see how it would be affecting service in Colorado.

Re: (Score:2)

by cstacy ( 534252 )

> Is this happening more regularly? Or am I just paying more attention to it because I'm irrationally paranoid of cyberattacks leading up to the election?

“Once is happenstance. Twice is incompetence.

Three times is failure to test disaster recovery scenarios."

Re: (Score:2)

by LazarusQLong ( 5486838 )

yeah, my thoughts seem to coincide...

Re: Question (Score:2)

by anonymouscoward52236 ( 6163996 )

But aren't Verizon customers just a bunch of cranky people who overpay for a service just so they have the ability to complain about it loudly?

Re: Question (Score:2)

by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

Not in my case. I have prepay. It's $35/mo and includes enough Internet that I never run out, though I only really use it while driving or when I'm eating lunch out since I have Wi-Fi access at home and work. I hear from Verizon customers with bills starting at twice what I'm paying and just shake my head.

On the other hand, signal and uptime are both poor. When we had our quake here a little while back the cell went down, Verizon claimed they were bringing us a generator, and then they just didn't bother to

Re: (Score:2)

by techno-vampire ( 666512 )

On the other hand, signal and uptime are both poor. When we had our quake here a little while back the cell went down, Verizon claimed they were bringing us a generator, and then they just didn't bother to. We were down for almost three days.

And there was much rejoicing here on /. as the signal to noise ratio improved.

Re: (Score:2)

by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 )

So, Iran is meddling, true. Verizon customers are experiencing outages, true.

What do you suppose would connect these two things? What benefit would Iran get from causing cell services outages? Would that somehow benefit one candidate or the other? I don't get your thought process.

I guess people can't hear him now (Score:5, Funny)

by Targon ( 17348 )

"Can you hear me now?"....nope.

Verizon new fee coming... (Score:3)

by blahbooboo ( 839709 )

Verizon customers will see a new fee on their bill as a result of this outage -- current, future, and preventive outage fee. /s

Re: (Score:2)

by LazarusQLong ( 5486838 )

a few months back i saw a new fee for 5G. I called them up to complain, because, well, my old phone doesn't have the capability to send/receive 5G, it is old enough that it hasn't those radios in it.

TLDR; they said shut up and suck it, we now charge everyone for that.

Re: (Score:2)

by mustafap ( 452510 )

lolz

Re: (Score:2)

by LazarusQLong ( 5486838 )

yep. ludicrous (as in funny, not as in the rapper)

Re: (Score:2)

by omnichad ( 1198475 )

If you want a paper statement, that will be an extra $5 per month. If you sign up for electronic invoicing, you can waive that charge but you'll be subject to a monthly paperless billing fee of $5.

Re: (Score:2)

by LazarusQLong ( 5486838 )

100%. Yeah, it is a screw you if you don't and screw you if you do situation

Re: (Score:2)

by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 )

Switch to prepaid wireless. Those stupid fees aren't applied to prepaid customers, and the plans and coverage are just as good, if you don't need them to subsidize your phone.

It's aliens! (Score:2)

by Tablizer ( 95088 )

...I saw them! They ate my pets and [bleeped] my refrigerator.

Re: (Score:2)

by nightflameauto ( 6607976 )

> ...I saw them! They ate my pets and [bleeped] my refrigerator.

Wherein Earth becomes part of another species' version of rule 34.

Re: It's aliens! (Score:2)

by anonymouscoward52236 ( 6163996 )

Maybe bleeping your refrigerator is just their way if saying hello?

Re: (Score:2)

by crunchy_one ( 1047426 )

Is that a fridge in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

In Silicon Valley, Someone Asked Me to Use a Phone (Score:2)

by BrendaEM ( 871664 )

I guess the problem is here in Campbell/San Jose, too.

She asked me, "What's your sign?"
I blinked and answered "Neon,"
I thought I'd blow her mind...