On Monday, tens of thousands of Americans were hit hard by a widespread Verizon outage, leaving the network offline for several hours. While the issue has since been resolved, the frustration lingers for healthcare workers, students, and countless others who rely on their cell service.
The big question now: what caused it?
According to telecom experts that spoke with CNN, these outages are usually tied to one of three culprits: overloaded networks in urban hubs, botched software updates (like what happened to AT&T), or technical glitches. But while these blanket explanations cover some bases, they don’t pinpoint what exactly went wrong this time.
It’s not the first time this year that phone users have experienced a major outage. AT&T experienced a similar meltdown in February.
Let’s be abundantly clear: as of this writing, there’s still no official word on what caused the Verizon outage. The FCC has launched an investigation, but Verizon has remained mostly silent, offering only a brief apology acknowledging the disruption and stating that the issue is being resolved.
So, while the network appears to be back online, the exact cause of the crash remains a mystery for now.
Mashable has reached out to Verizon’s communications team for a comment, but they have yet to respond.
This is a developing story. It will be updated as more details become available.
