Verizon Communications said it will give a $20 credit to hundreds of thousands of customers affected by Wednesday’s 10-hour outage, which was caused by a software problem. However, it led many customers to ask whether the Verizon outage credit was enough.  

Verizon said the outage mostly affected customers in the Northeast, Southern California, Texas, and parts of the Midwest. The company confirmed it was not a cyberattack and fixed the problem by 10pm EST on Wednesday. Unfortunately, the solution did not prevent numerous Verizon customer complaints, which claimed the $20 credit was insufficient for the trouble they had to endure.  

The Federal Communications Commission said it will review the outage.  

We did not meet the standards of excellence our customers expect, or the standards we expect of ourselves. To provide relief, Verizon said it is issuing a $20 account credit to affected customers.  

The company also mentioned that if customers are still experiencing issues, they should restart their devices and reconnect to the network.  

Several major cities told residents to use other carriers to contact emergency services to overcome the outage. Down Detector reported receiving 2.2 million outage reports related to Verizon in the past 24 hours.  

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brandon Carr told Reuters after a congressional hearing that the agency would review the issue and take appropriate action.  

During the outage, New York City warned residents that calling 9-11 could be affected. The city advised using another carrier’s device, a landline, or visiting a police or fire station to report emergencies, as stated on X.  

The District of Columbia issued a similar alert, and these warnings were lifted after normal service resumed.  

In late 2020, Verizon had a national outage that affected more than 100,000 users at its peak. The incident caught the FCC’s attention after several services were disrupted, prompting iPhone users to use SOS mode. Many users reported the same SOS mode problem during Wednesday’s outage.  

Historical Comparisons of the Verizon Outage 

On January 14, Verizon experienced a major nationwide disruption to its cellular service. Subscribers nationwide faced significant connectivity issues. Outage reports reached hundreds of thousands, but this figure understates the true impact. Many affected customers did not or could not submit reports. The disruption affected numerous IoT-driven services that rely on cellular networks, including tracking platforms, transaction processing systems, and other connected devices.  

The outage lasted about 11 hours, based on economic effects from similar past events, including interruptions to financial transactions and delays in supply chain operations. We estimate the total US economic impact at $500 million.  

Below is an overview of the incident and anticipated follow-up actions 

• A software issue caused the outage. Verizon has not yet provided an official statement, but a spokesperson confirmed this was the cause. Most IT professionals use cellular technologies as backup for wide-area networks, which often limits the impact of outages. However, enterprises relying on cellular for core operations, such as fieldwork, asset tracking, or payment systems, are severely affected by outages of this scale.  

• Investigations and high costs for Verizon will follow. Verizon will submit an official root cause report to the FCC, while the U.S. government agencies will work to rule out cyberattacks. Customer rebates, credits, and potential customer and business lawsuits are expected. Verizon will implement process and technology improvements to tackle the underlying issues, and the FCC may review its regulations. We estimate Verizon could face up to $1.5B in direct impact with a potential 3-year improvement plan costing $22-30B.  

• Verizon’s brand reputation will likely suffer with potential customer churn expected in the months following the incidents. Typically, within 6-9 months of our response, we anticipate that Verizon will introduce resiliency enhancements and progress on client-oriented credit or guarantee terms. Similar to AT&T’s AT&T Guarantee, in large-scale outages, honesty and quick communication are crucial to minimizing brand damage. Yet Verizon did not provide this level of transparency during the recent event. Work outages and performance slowdowns are inevitable, leading to a downturn in customer sentiment. This is due to physical limitations, human error, and increased infrastructure complexity. This incident was notable because it affected a major national carrier relied upon daily by businesses and consumers. Given this dependence, carriers are expected to meet high standards. Commit to service-level agreements and 5-9 availability (no more than 5 minutes and 15 seconds of downtime per year). An 11-hour disruption far exceeds these expectations. It is among the most significant outages in recent years. What lessons should carriers and IT leaders draw from this event?  

• Revisit your wireless connectivity strategy for organizations relying on a singular cellular carrier. This may be the right time to re-evaluate whether additional technologies can better meet business needs.  
   
  To clarify, key recommendations include:  

• Implementing multi-SIM or e-SIM-based redundant carrier technology connectivity  

• Considering alternative wireless paths such as satellite links or low-power wide area networks  

• Developing a proactive plan to maintain resilience while expecting carriers to comply with rigorous reliability standards  

• Taking these steps allows organizations to act proactively.  

• Accelerate Investments in Advanced Networking Capabilities. Although network outages and slowdowns are inevitable, many networking teams struggle to plan ahead and build resilience, often treating monitoring and forward-looking standards as secondary priorities. Maximizing uptime and guaranteeing swift remediation are critical to customer experience. Network automation, comprehensive performance management, including visibility, observability, and AIOps, fast root cause analytics, and system-wide improvement via AI are now essential. To prevent every outage, they can identify issues earlier, prevent many degradations, and simulate the impact of changes before deployment. Automation also enables faster resolution of widespread issues.  

• Advanced companies, especially carriers, must pursue more sophisticated practices. Basic investments in automation, observability, and analytics are no longer enough. Accordingly, leaders should adopt wide enterprise-wide networking fabrics, digital twin simulations, and real-time event communication. Traditional networks required slow, manual component-by-component changes. Modern software-defined fabrics enable a single update across hundreds of thousands of devices, making pre-change validation critical here. Digital twins let teams safely simulate configuration updates, patches, and upgrades to understand their full impact before production. Carriers should accelerate the adoption of these capabilities, just as aerospace and aviation professionals rely on simulation to manage complexity and maintain precision.  

Numerous Verizon customers are concerned that $20 may not fully reflect the value of the service interruption. A more appropriate amount could align with the cost of one month of 5G coverage, around $50. Customers recognize that implementing this change would be a considerable undertaking for Verizon, given its sizable customer base, and acknowledge that it would pose a challenge for the company.  

Based on comments in live coverage outage reports, many customers across the United States feel the $20 credit may not address their concerns. While Verizon has recently improved communication, there was a period during the outage when updates were not provided for several hours. This information gap, together with the limited compensation, has naturally led to frustration for some. Additionally, some customers have reported that contacting customer service can lead to a larger credit, though individual experiences may vary.