We Now Know What Caused the Verizon Network Outage.
By now, you’ve undoubtedly heard about (or experienced) yesterday’s massive Verizon network outage . For nearly all of Wednesday, nearly two million Verizon subscribers were unable to connect to the network and were forced to use Wi-Fi to access their smartphones, which otherwise remained in SOS mode. Sure, they could call 911, but there wasn’t much else they could do.
It was a real ordeal, and Verizon is literally paying for it: the company has pledged to pay affected customers $20 in compensation . It may not be as much as some of us think, but it’s at least something. And if that $20 doesn’t console you, the fact that the outage is over should —even if you had to reboot your phone this morning to apply the fix .
The strangest part of this whole story was that Verizon initially provided no details about the cause of the outage. The company posted updates throughout yesterday, releasing updates and responding to angry customer inquiries, but still offered no clarification as to why its network was down for so many subscribers. Finally, a day and a half after the outages began, the company received an answer, albeit partial.
The Verizon outage was caused by a software bug, not a cyberattack.
According to a statement Verizon sent to our sister site Mashable , the outage was simply caused by a software issue. “This was a software issue, and we are conducting a full investigation,” the company said. “At this time, there is no indication that this was a cybersecurity issue.” That last part is important, as some customers interpreted the outage as evidence of a cyberattack. While these concerns seem unfounded given the current global situation, I understand the fears.
However, while it’s nice to have some explanation, I would have liked more details. This wasn’t a minor, temporary outage affecting only a limited number of users; customers across the country were unable to connect to Verizon for most of the day. Software issues do happen, but they typically don’t lead to service outages for one of the three largest carriers in the United States.