TAMPA, Fla. — Did you have trouble making phone calls today? You weren't alone.
Wednesday, we looked into a cell service issue after multiple Verizon users in our newsroom said they were having trouble making contact with colleagues. And, it turns out, it wasn't just us.
Some cell users saw an empty spot in the corner where they'd normally be able to check how many bars of signal they have on their phones.
Just before 2 p.m. ET, Down Detector – which monitors service outages – began showing a massive spike in complaints about Verizon. By 2:12 p.m., there'd been well over 1,000 reports of issues. That's up from a typical baseline of around 115 reports or so.
We tried calling Verizon, but had trouble with our phones. So, we sent an email to some of the company's communications representatives.
In a statement, Verizon said it was aware of the "network disruptions" that were due to "multiple fiber cuts."
"Our engineers are working to quickly resolve this issue," the company said.
At 7:37 p.m., a representative from Verizon sent our news station an update letting us know that the cell service issue had been resolved. Our 10 Tampa Bay colleagues concurred, happy to be able to use their cellphones again.
The issues come after reports of outages earlier this week in Georgia, which were covered by our sister-station WMAZ.
"We are receiving increased reports of service issues in our area. Our network team is currently investigating," Verizon Support tweeted at the time of the Georgia issues. "We are working to resolve the issue, which could take up to 12-14 hours. We recommend enabling WiFi calling via a secure WiFi source."
Verizon services appeared to have mostly returned in that state.