Not Again: FCC to Investigate Cause of Verizon Outage

More than 100,000 Verizon users lost access to mobile services Monday (Sept. 30).

The wireless carrier said it was aware of the issue, per a report by NBC News, marking the latest in a series of mass technical outages this year.

“We’re aware of a Verizon outage impacting customers in parts of the country,” the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) posted on its Facebook page Monday afternoon. “We are working to determine the cause and extent of these service disruptions.”

The website Down Detector had logged 104,378 outages as of Monday morning, though that figure had declined as the day went on.

This year has seen other high-profile technical outages, including one in July triggered by a software glitch at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. That outage impacted Microsoft users around the world, affecting banks, airlines and hospitals.

Last week, the House Homeland Security Committee held a hearing on the outage, with members grilling Adam Meyers, the firm’s senior vice president, counter adversary operations.

“The sheer scale of this error was alarming. … We are here today to understand what went wrong,” subcommittee Chairman Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) said to open the hearing.

“We need CrowdStrike to be effective and successful because its efficacy and success are the effectiveness and success of its customers,” added ranking member Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), who noted that CrowdStrike owns 17.7% of the global cybersecurity market share.

And in February, Verizon rival AT& suffered a widespread service outage affecting multiple cities, including New York, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta and Houston. The FCC later released a report criticizing AT&T’s role and response to the outage, which blocked 92 million calls, including more than 25,000 attempts to dial 911.

As in the Crowdstrike outage, this one was caused by a botched update related to a network expansion. It’s why, PYMNTS wrote in July, “in today’s interconnected world, where digital disruptions are, unfortunately, increasingly common, the ability to learn from and adapt to these challenges is crucial for long-term business success.”

Meanwhile, Verizon announced earlier this month that it was purchasing Frontier, the largest pure-play fiber internet provider in the U.S., in an all-cash transaction valued at $20 billion.

The deal, PYMNTS wrote, bodes well for the future of connectivity — and therefore the connected economy.

“With the rise of 5G and even 6G, the increasing reliance on fiber optics and the ongoing shift to digital-first lifestyles, this acquisition speaks volumes about the future of connectivity and the strategic maneuvers large corporations are making to position themselves in a rapidly evolving landscape,” that report said.