Verizon customers report nationwide outage; areas include DeSoto County
The popular phrase, “can you hear me now?” took on a more important meaning for thousands of customers with Verizon service Wednesday, including those served in DeSoto County.
A widespread Verizon outage disrupted wireless service for customers across the United States on Wednesday, leaving many unable to make calls, send texts or access mobile data for several hours. The company has not yet announced a cause for the outage.
The disruption began late Wednesday morning, with more than 175,000 reports logged on outage‑tracking platforms at its peak. Major metro areas including New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta saw the highest concentration of reports. Users described seeing “SOS,” “No Service” and “Emergency Calls Only” indicators on their devices.
While not among the hardest‑hit areas, Verizon customers in the Memphis metro area — including DeSoto County — experienced intermittent service problems. Local users reported that service appeared to start returning to normal around 1 p.m. Central time.
Other carriers, including AT&T and T‑Mobile, said their networks were operating normally, though calls placed to Verizon customers were affected because of Verizon’s internal outage.
Emergency officials in several large cities warned that some Verizon users might not be able to reach 911 during the disruption. No such advisory was issued in DeSoto County.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Verizon said engineers were working to fully stabilize the network but did not provide details about what triggered the nationwide failure.
