Verizon users hit with third data outage in December

While many cellular providers added new customers over the holiday weekend due to smartphone gifts, Verizon is continuing to have issues with the 4G LTE network.

According to a report out of Reuters, Verizon is investigating yet another outage of the data network. Noted as the third network outage during the month of December, some customers have reported an inability to connect to the 4G LTE network in a smattering of major U.S. cities including Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago and San Francisco.  Marquett Smith, vice president of corporate communications for Verizon Wireless, released a statement that the company is currently working to resolve the new issue with the 4G LTE network. He stated “The network continues to operate and all customers continue to be able to make calls, send text messages and utilize data services. 3G devices are operating normally.“

With the other problems causing issues for Verizon customers earlier this month, the cellular company has yet to release a statement on the cause of these outages. Verizon has been heavily promoting the 4G LTE network as a benefit over other cellular providers in national advertising campaigns on television, radio and the Web. According to Verizon, the 4G LTE network is supposed to offer speeds approximately ten times faster than the average speed of a 3G connection across various cellular providers. With approximately 3.7 million Android devices activated over the holiday weekend, the amount of new subscribers utilizing Verizon’s 4G LTE network may be too much of a burden on the data network in large metropolitan areas. 

While Verizon claims that all 3G devices are operating properly, customers have also been complaining of 3G outages as well. Customers have indicated that the 4G network is completely unavailable and their new device only connects to the 3G network intermittently. These issues during December have gone against Verizon’s advertising slogan that claims the 4G LTE network is the ”nation’s fastest, most reliable 4G network.”