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Internet Outages Frustrate East Coast As Verizon Blames "Cut Cable" In Brooklyn
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jan 26, 2021
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John Lamparski/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jan 26, 2021
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An untold number of Verizon Internet customers trying to work or go to school or connect to the vital flow of information that is necessary for life in this century have been thwarted by an outage on Tuesday morning.
The Verizon customer service account has acknowledged that there is a "cut cable" in Brooklyn causing problems, but the outage appears to be spread across the east coast, as customers from Boston to Pittsburgh to D.C. have been tweeting their issues at the telecom company.
Virginia's state senate appears to have been one of the affected parties, though it looks like their internet came back online around 1:30 p.m.
Reps from Verizon have not responded to our request for comment. A spokesperson from Charter/Spectrum dryly noted that it has been a "quiet day" for them.
While users of Zoom, Amazon, and G-Suite products have also reported outages today, it's unclear if they are related to Verizon's issues. A rep from Amazon pointed out that the company's dashboard is reporting the issue as external. "We are aware of reports regarding issues affecting access to some Google products, but have not found issues with our services. We're continuing to investigate," a Google spokesperson wrote in an email.
As we reported this fall, Verizon has a fraught relationship with New York City. Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a deal with the company in 2008, which promised to bring Fios service to “each and every borough, neighborhood, boulevard, avenue and street” in the city by 2014. But the franchise agreement itself only required Verizon to “pass” every building with Fios cable, not run the actual wires to people’s homes. In 2017, the city sued Verizon to force the company to actually offer their service to New Yorkers per the agreement. That lawsuit was settled this past November, and Verizon agreed to expand to another 500,000 households, with priority given to 125,000 homes in low-income neighborhoods.
We'll update this post as we learn more.
[UPDATE / 5:44 p.m.] Verizon rep Christopher Serico, just sent us this statement: "An internet issue impacting the quality of our Fios service throughout the Northeast has been resolved, and network performance and service levels are returning to normal. We are working to identify the root cause."
Tagged
broadband access
verizon
internet
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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