Verizon’s outage was extensive, but now the company has offered a $20 credit to affected users. Here are the full details of what happened, and what you should do now.

We're still piecing together what caused Verizon's extended service blackout, but network experts point to possibilities based on how it transpired.

Tess Coward, a 27-year-old PR professional based in New York City, woke up feeling under the weather on Wednesday. But without the ability to make phone calls or receive text messages, she couldn’t get in touch with her doctor or log into the provider’s patient portal.

Verizon says a software problem caused the glitch and it is conducting a postmortem, but experts say outages are "a fact of life" these days.

Verizon Communications has received the final approvals needed to buy fiber-optic broadband provider Frontier Communications after agreeing to some concessions to California regulators, including a small-business spending commitment.

By late last year, I had fully paid off all but one device on our account. I was seriously considering paying the remaining balance in one lump sum and switching to prepaid. I was confident that I would be out from under Verizon ahead of 2026. Then things changed, and now I am no longer certain I will leave Verizon anytime soon.

Verizon is offering customers a $20 account credit following a massive outage that brought down service across the US on Wednesday. In an update on X, Verizon says you’ll receive a text message when the credit is available, which you can redeem by logging into the myVerizon app and accepting it.

Verizon's services are fully back up. The carrier giant suggests restarting your device to reconnect it to the network. Additionally, the carrier is also giving all impacted Verizon users a $20 account credit to make up for the outage.