Verizon says it has fixed a major outage that appeared to affect Georgia and parts of Florida. Wireless customers reported they couldn’t make calls, connect to data service, or send and receive text messages for hours.
“This afternoon there was a fiber issue that caused a network disruption for some customers in Georgia,” Verizon spokesperson Karen Schulz said in a statement to The Verge. “Our engineers worked to identify the issue and service has since been restored.”
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According to Down Detector, reports of connectivity problems started around 2PM ET, with issues mostly reported in Georgia. Judging by Down Detector’s data, reports of outages started slowly declining around 3:30PM ET and then tapered off just before 6PM ET.
The outage affected businesses who use Verizon’s services and potentially even calls to 911. As reported by the Savannah-based news station WJCL, it appeared that some counties in southeastern Georgia took precautions when it came to emergency calls — Chatham County officials said emergency calls weren’t affected, while Bulloch County advised people to use landlines to call 911.
Update February 14th 6:15PM ET: Updated to reflect that the outage has been fixed, and added new statement from a Verizon spokesperson.