Wireless

Verizon Says Major Outage Caused by ‘Software Issue’

The company also closed its acquisition of Frontier Tuesday.

Jake Neenan

Jan 20, 2026 — 2 min read

Photo of House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., by Mark Schiefelbein/AP

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20, 2026 – Verizon’s major network outage last week was caused by a software issue, the company said Tuesday.

“This was a software issue and we are conducting a full review of what happened. As of now, there is no indication that this was a cyber security issue,” Verizon officials said in a statement.

Outage data aggregator Downdetector said in a post on X that it received more than 2.3 million user reports of Verizon’s mobile network being down on Jan. 14, the day of the outage.

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Wireless FCC Verizon Frontier Andrew Garbarino Mashable Dan Schulman Hans Vestberg Craig Moffett

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