House Homeland Security Chair Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., is calling on Verizon and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to brief Congress on a service outage that affected many Verizon customers.
That outage occurred last week on the morning of Jan. 14, when customers noticed their phones began displaying “SOS” and no longer had cellular service. Service was restored by that night.
Downdetector, which tracks service outages, posted to X that more than 2.3 million outages were reported during the incident.
“Verizon is the largest mobile network in the United States, and this outage affected tens of thousands of customers, including components of the federal government, with more than 2.3 million outage reports,” Garbarino wrote to Verizon.
“The scale and duration of the outage raises serious concerns and questions regarding the strength and security of the Verizon network. These concerns include reliability for emergency services and impact on both state and federal government operations,” Garbarino added.
Verizon has not publicly commented on the cause of the outage. The FCC said on Jan. 15 that it was launching an investigation into the incident.
Garbarino wrote to FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr requesting that the FCC also brief Congress on the incident by Jan. 23.
Verizon said that it would provide $20 account credits to customers who lost service during the outage.
However, the Jones County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia warned that some people have been receiving texts or emails claiming to be Verizon offering a credit for their account.
“Do NOT click the link. This is a scam designed to steal your personal info, account details, or infect your device with malware,” the office said in a Facebook post.