PHOENIX — Thousands of Verizon Wireless customers across Arizona started their Monday without cell service after a widespread outage affected the cell provider. While the reason for the outage isn't fully known yet, a Valley tech expert said there could be two possibilities: an update went wrong or Verizon's network was targeted by hackers.
“One, which is the most common, is some kind of human error, where more than likely than not, an update of some sort was pushed out to expand the network upgrade speeds or do something of that nature, and the update went wrong," Brandon Disney with Data Doctors said.
Disney says the second possibility, Verizon's network has been attacked, is certainly something their engineers are looking into.
“Two would be some kind of hacking event or something like that, where some malicious actor has done something, but a little bit less likely in that case," Disney said.
Verizon users reported waking up to an 'SOS' icon in the top right-hand corner of their smartphones. Disney explained that the icon means your smartphone is searching for ways to connect to the internet.
“The SOS mode is sort of the backup, where it's trying to use either other carriers routes or some of the low earth orbit satellites that are out there for basic messaging and things," Disney said.
According to the site Downdetector, over 100,000 people across the U.S. reported experiencing the outage. In Phoenix, that number was over 5,000 people. Disney says that is likely only a fraction of the total number of people impacted.
He also says these types of outages aren't entirely common. He urges consumers to think twice before jumping ship to a new carrier because of this latest outage.
“Verizon, I think their last major outage of this size was back in 2012 so it's not something that happens real frequently, but it does happen, obviously," Disney said.
A spokesperson for Verizon sent the below statement to 12News on the widespread network issues:
"Verizon engineers are making progress on our network issue and service has started to be restored. We know how much people rely on Verizon and apologize for any inconvenience some of our customers experienced today. We continue to work around the clock to fully resolve this issue."