Wednesday saw a significant disruption in Verizon’s nationwide network, potentially triggered by an issue in a single East Coast state. Early investigations suggest that the failure of a network server in New Jersey might be at the root of the extensive, day-long outage.

As law enforcement agencies along the East Coast explore the possibility of sabotage, many social media users were quick to theorize that the widespread network disturbance, which switched cell phones to SOS mode for hours, resulted from a cyberattack.

In response to the outage, New York State Assembly member Anil Beephan has urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch an investigation. Despite these calls, no evidence of tampering or cybercriminal hacking activities has been uncovered thus far.

Nonetheless, the rapid spread of the outage has raised suspicions among cybersecurity professionals. James Knight from DigitalWarfare.com shared with the Daily Mail that experts in the field find it concerning how such an outage could affect the entire US network in mere minutes.

However, James Knight of DigitalWarfare.com told the Daily Mail that cyberwarfare experts are very suspicious about this outage being able to spread across the entire US within minutes.

‘True single-point failures shouldn’t cascade this way in a properly engineered system, and the silence on exact causes only heightens doubts,’ Knight explained.

Knight added Verizon’s ‘built-in redundancies,’ including spread out data centers, constant system tests, and multiple routing paths for signals, should have prevented this kind of long-term and widespread service blackout.

‘That said, there are no credible signs or evidence this was cyberwarfare, a cyberattack, or foreign interference,’ the cyberwarfare expert noted.

Tens of thousands of Verizon customers had their phones switching into SOS mode due to a network outage on Wednesday (Stock Image)

While Verizon’s network failure mirrored a 2024 AT&T outage that was blamed on ‘internal software’ problems, Knight called the timing ‘suspicious’ based on the geopolitical tensions between the US and adversaries like China and Iran.

‘Everyone I’ve spoken to is either tight-lipped or suspicious,’ he told Daily Mail.

Despite the timing, no groups or nations have claimed responsibility for any kind of potential attack on Verizon’s server, which Knight said would have been typical for disruptive actors seeking visibility for a major hack.

The telecommunications giant has yet to provide any details on the exact cause of the mysterious blackout, leaving customers without the ability to make calls or send text messages.

On Thursday, Verizon told Daily Mail that all customers affected by the outage would receive a $20 credit to their account, which they will need to redeem using the myVerizon app.

‘This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened. No credit, really, can. But it’s a way of acknowledging our customers’ time and showing that this matters to us,’ a spokesperson for Verizon said.

The spokesperson added that business customers would be contacted directly about being compensated, but did not provide specifics on how many Verizon users were affected or how the company knows who was impacted.

During the outage, Verizon users reported that the problem seemed to be random, affecting some of their accounts but not others. Some families noted having one phone go into SOS mode while another was working all day.

A Verizon worker repairs a network tower during service disruptions

Despite Verizon reporting that ‘the outage has been resolved’ at 10.20pm ET on Wednesday night, some customers have continued to report issues with Verizon’s service lasting well past midnight and into Thursday.

‘I have some data now, but absolutely no call goes through.. says call failed. It’s been almost a full 24 hours and this is ridiculous,’ one Verizon customer reported at 9.10am ET.

According to outage-tracking website Down Detector, the network began to break down just before 12 noon on Wednesday.

Within an hour, there were more than 180,000 reports from across the US saying that their mobile phone had gone into SOS mode, meaning they had no connection to Verizon’s network and could only make emergency calls to 911 and send emergency texts.

Major cities along the East Coast, including New York and Washington DC, appeared to be the hardest hit areas, with customers in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Seattle also reporting widespread outages.

Although Verizon began providing a series of updates on their efforts to fix the network issues starting just after 2pm, none of the company’s social media posts revealed the specific issue, calling it a ‘service issue’ and ‘service interruption.’

Daily Mail’s attempts to contact Verizon on Wednesday were not answered, and an automated message said the company was dealing with ‘an emergency condition.’