The FCC wants to hear your Verizon outage experience

Source: Mashable Tech

Background

Last month, Verizon’s massive network outage prevented thousands of customers from making calls or using mobile data for over 10 hours. The outage occurred on Jan. 14 and disrupted voice, text, and data services across the carrier’s network.

FCC Request for Public Input

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is asking the public to share how the outage impacted them as part of its investigation. The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is seeking information from individuals and businesses about:

• Whether Verizon customers could send or receive calls and messages.
• How long service was disrupted.
• Whether people on other networks could contact them.

911 Call Concerns

The FCC is particularly interested in any experiences involving emergency calls. In theory, 911 calls should be able to connect to any mobile tower during a network outage, but in practice this may not have occurred.

As reported by Mashable (cited in the FCC’s public notice), multiple official emergency services warned that 911 calls might not connect while Verizon’s outage was ongoing, advising people to seek help via alternate means. Some social‑media users also claimed they were unable to reach emergency services during the outage.

The FCC wants to hear from anyone who was unable to contact 911 because of the outage, and whether any harm or injury resulted. It is also seeking input from first responders and government agencies about the impact on public‑safety services.

How to Submit Comments

Comments can be submitted online via the FCC’s electronic comment filing system or by emailing a description of the experience to [email protected]. The FCC will accept submissions until March 16.

Related Outages

• Verizon’s January outage has been labeled one of the U.S.’s worst in the 2020s.
• The only comparable incident was AT&T’s outage in Feb. 2024, which lasted at least 12 hours and caused approximately 25,000 emergency calls to fail (Reuters).
• Australia experienced a similar issue in September 2025 when a massive outage at Optus prevented customers from calling emergency services. Over 600 emergency calls failed during Optus’s 13‑hour outage, and at least four deaths were reported after attempts to contact help did not go through (ABC News; 9News).