This is the very first thing cell community specialists need you to know when taking inventory of the nice Verizon service outage of January 2026. It will not be the final — and that being on AT&T or T-Cell will not make you immune both.
Anticipating a contemporary cell community to perform across the clock, across the yr, like water, energy or gasoline utilities, “is not virtually attainable,” says Octavio Garcia, Forrester analyst and cell trade veteran. The infrastructure concerned (cellphone towers, satellites, and as in Verizon’s case, software program) “shouldn’t be proof against unexpected outages on account of a number of causes.”
That stated, specialists additionally agree: This one was actually unhealthy for Verizon, and never simply because it prevented an as-yet-untold variety of 911 calls.
The outage’s solely shut contender within the worst cell service implosion of the 2020s can be the nice AT&T nightmare of Feb. 2024. That one additionally lasted roughly 11 hours; a later investigation revealed 92 million calls did not undergo, together with 25,000 calls to 911.
“This outage does really feel like a much bigger deal,” says Alex Besen, a 30-year veteran of the cell knowledge trade, now CEO of The Besen Group. “In 2024, many [AT&T] clients had intermittent knowledge and SMS … this outage took down voice and knowledge concurrently, and left telephones caught in SOS mode.”
Verizon outage as we speak: Verizon reveals how you can repair ongoing points, presents $20 credit score
Verizon had a ‘core failure’
The AT&T outage was finally traced to 1 worker operating a community replace that was wrongly configured. This one, Besen says, was “extra of a core failure” — a software program situation that so blindsided the corporate that Verizon could not verify it was coping with a software program situation for almost all of the outage.
We’ll have to attend for a full investigation on the Verizon outage to make a full comparability between them. We’ll even have to attend to see what function the largest spherical of layoffs in Verizon’s historical past, which occurred in Nov. 2025, had on this scenario.
Mashable Mild Pace
It is totally attainable that a kind of 13,000 former staffers — together with no less than one Community Engineering challenge supervisor — might have held the type of institutional information essential to stopping a software-driven outage.
Within the meantime, the story of the tape from Downdetector (the place customers report outages and which, like Mashable, is owned by Ziff Davis) does recommend the Verizon outage was worse than its AT&T predecessor.
Through the Feb. 2024 outage, Downdetector-reported outages from AT&T clients peaked at 74,000 concurrent experiences (that’s, throughout the similar 15 minute window), however had been beginning to stage off by 9 a.m. ET.
Distinction that with Jan. 14 2026, when Downdetector hit a excessive of 178,000 concurrent experiences from Verizon clients — and that peak got here proper in the course of east coast daytime, at 12:45 p.m. ET.
Verizon shops, now in SOS mode
For Verizon, the SOS message was horribly acceptable — and probably ongoing. As aggrieved clients contemplate whether or not $20 is sufficient compensation, many might observe via on guarantees to cancel their contracts altogether. SOS would possibly as properly stand for “save our shops.”
“Verizon will undergo from model status affect and attainable buyer churn,” Forrester analyst Garcia instructed Mashable. “That is anticipated to occur throughout the first six to 9 months after the outage.”
One approach to shorten that churn time: Implement one thing much like the AT&T Assure, a cell trade first which launched in Jan. 2025, slightly below a yr after the nice AT&T outage. The corporate now says it delivers automated compensation: One full free day of service in case your wi-fi goes out for an hour or extra.
Within the meantime, Verizon and its opponents wait to see how massive the exodus will likely be. And there is not even a silver lining to be present in Verizon having fewer however happier individuals to cope with on its service.
“Shedding clients would virtually actually damage Verizon within the brief time period, even when it barely decreased community load,” says Besen.
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