WEST LEBANON — Hundreds of confused cellphone users in the Upper Valley flocked to the Verizon store on Route 12A after their phones suddenly lost service on Wednesday.
It took until about 10:30 p.m. for Verizon to announce on social media that the problem — which had begun approximately 10 hours earlier — had been resolved.
The company offered no explanation for the prolonged service interruption, saying only that further details would be shared “directly with customers.”
Earlier in the day at the West Lebanon store, Verizon employees stood outside to inform visitors that their phones had lost service due to a nationwide outage. The store phone was also ringing with customers looking for answers.
Among those gathered on Wednesday was Bonnie Dayton, a Stockbridge, Vt., resident, who said she was on the phone with a distraught family member who lives outside of the area when her phone stopped working, causing them to disconnect.
Dayton was concerned about not having a way to reach out to people for the time being, especially since landlines have been widely phased out.
“I have a meeting with somebody later today who I’m not going to be able to contact to let her know that I’m there,” Dayton said. “We don’t know each other, so I don’t know how we’re going to hook up.”
Verizon users made a peak of over 175,000 outage reports between 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Downdetector, an online platform that monitors digital service outages, reported. The number of reports tapered off as the afternoon wore on, but tens of thousands were still coming in as of about 4 p.m.
Trey Burke, a sales associate at Verizon, said he was not sure when exactly the outage started, but he observed many people in front of the store earlier in the afternoon with a common issue: No service.
Hours later, Burke remained unsure when service would return, or why it went out in the first place. Some 30% of phone users with a Verizon plan did not experience the same issue on Wednesday, he said.
Among the estimated 200 people who had visited the Verizon store as of mid-afternoon, less than five were upset by the news, Burke said.
For his part, Burke was still able to send messages via Wi-Fi, but he was unable to make calls. With difficulties in reaching Verizon itself, the West Lebanon store employees had minimal information regarding the root cause.
“I’m trying to stay optimistic about everything, but everyone is thinking it’s something serious,” Burke said.
Another sales partner, Benjamin Marshall, said he had never seen an outage of this magnitude, though they do occur occasionally. Others he has seen have been regional and tended to resolve more quickly.
Burke said he believed that emergency services could still be reached without cell service.
But, New York and other cities issued warnings regarding a potential disruption to 911 calls, the Associated Press reported. If they need emergency assistance and are unable to call 911 from their cellphones, residents were encouraged to use a landline or a device with a different carrier, or to seek out police or fire department services in person.
Associates at the AT&T store in West Lebanon declined to comment on the outage and the T-Mobile store was closed.
John Downing, a Verizon customer who lives in Enfield, noticed his iPhone stopped working around noon. He planned to travel by plane on Thursday for work and worried the cell outage could affect his trip. He had never experienced such an outage before, which prompted him to stop by the store and wait outside for some answers, he said.
“They don’t know much sometimes,” Downing said.
As of 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, there was no information available regarding the cause of the outage, or indications of when the issue would be resolved.
A message on the Verizon website read: “Verizon is aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers. We are working to restore service quickly.”
At about 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Verizon issued an apology to customers along with a promise to provide account credits to those impacted in a social media message. About an hour later the company reported that the outage had been resolved.
As of Thursday morning, outage reports by Verizon users had dwindled, with the Downdetector data showing about 3,000 reports at 8:30 a.m.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 12:40 p.m. on Thursday.