UPDATE: Verizon phone outage blamed on ‘fiber issue’

| Utilities | West Seattle news

3:14 PM: Thanks for the tips. Verizon phone customers are reporting trouble, not just here but in other states too, according to online reports. No official company statement so far. But some government agencies are starting to acknowledge it too.

3:36 PM: We inquired with Verizon media relations via email. The reply: “We are aware of an issue impacting voice calls for some Verizon customers. Our engineers are engaged and we are working quickly to identify and solve the issue.” (This is affecting our hotline too, by the way, so if you have a tip, text 206-293-6302, don’t try voice calling!)

5 PM: Sometime in the past 15 minutes or so (since previous attempts), our service was restored, both incoming and outgoing voice calls – at least as tested with the AT&T phone we also have in the house.

5:06 PM: We’ve also received an update from Verizon: “A fiber issue in the core of the network caused some of our customers to experience intermittent call failures today. The issue was identified and resolved by Verizon engineers and the majority of impacted customers should be seeing service as usual. If any customer is still experiencing lingering issues, please restart your device. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

k April 20, 2022 (3:41 pm)

I could not make calls for 2 hours on wifi or 4g (and part of that time, could not send texts). I tried restarting my phone, but what seemed to work was resetting my network settings. Either that or it just happened to coincide with an overall restoration by VZW. If you’re still having issues reboot.

some useful info in the comments here: https://downdetector.com/status/verizon/

WS Neighbor April 20, 2022 (3:56 pm)

Mine is working just fine. Just checked it. All ok!

David Hutchinson April 20, 2022 (4:30 pm)

I can call from my Verizon cell out to phones on another network and can receive calls from them but not Verizon to Verizon. I get a number of error messages from “call cannot be completed as dialed”, “the party is not available”, to just not ringing or disconnecting after a couple rings. This has been going on for about 4 hours. My text, email and internet work fine.

Cat April 20, 2022 (4:34 pm)

Thanks for reporting this!

Rodney April 20, 2022 (6:15 pm)

Our phones still don’t work for receiving and making calls here in Univeristy Place/Tacoma. Texts are fine though…Same as David H’s comments here.

Scooterista April 20, 2022 (6:31 pm)

We use Xfinity and we still can’t make or receive calls from landline or cell phones. They are dropped immediately. This started at 2:24 this afternoon. The Xfinity store in Westwood said it was “trouble with a cell tower.” Ironically, we can’t call the Xfinity support line either…

Just Joe April 20, 2022 (10:52 pm)

It’s been a problem for me ALL day here in the Renton area… Various error messages about “service unavailable”, “all circuits are busy”, etc.. Strange thing is that whomever I’m calling says their phone rings, but it simply disconnects when they go to answer it… And the same thing happens to me on incoming calls, or when I try to call anyone back. Seems it is limited to intra-Verizon network calls only, however. Modern “telecommunications”… what a joke. Organized chaos, implemented by so-called “service providers”. Yeah, right… “service”. They HATE us all… And they’re just letting us know… that is, for those whom are actually paying attention.And yet we just keep buying into all this garbage and mayhem. SMH. That isn’t going to end well.Enjoy the ride, folks. It’s only going to get rougher going forward (er… backwards, I meant.)

Scooterista April 21, 2022 (12:56 am)

Our xfinity phones still aren’t working (calls incoming and outgoing get dropped immediately) and the person who answered my text to the help desk just now said that xfinity’s service won’t be fixed until some time tomorrow. xfinity uses Verizon’s cell network and so I guess we are lower priority for having service restored. They did say all customers should get some kind of credit for the outage.

Lola April 21, 2022 (8:46 am)

It looks like Verizon Phones are still having trouble this morning. I have Verizon and I have tried making calls from it and it drops them. Tried at 8:30 AM today. Hope they get the problem fixed. Scooterista,Will have to ck. my bill when it comes out to see if they really do give us a credit. Thx.

Donna Rose April 21, 2022 (11:30 am)

Yes, I’m in the 530 area code and can’t seem to call out or receive calls again today. Texting is fine.

Dawn April 21, 2022 (12:04 pm)

So yes even my track phone was hit with dropping calls, but I am back online, was able to call Walmart, my husbands brother, and my brother so I’m good. My husband is still experiencing lack of ability to make and receive voice calls. we are stuck texting one another.