Yesterday, Verizon said that it’s 4G LTE network was back up and running after its third major crash in December. For those wondering why such a thing could happen–especially to a carrier that prides its service so highly that it plans to charge its customers $2 for the privilege of paying their own bill each month–Verizon has issued an explanation, sort of. In a statement, the company doesn’t directly apologize, but says that “being a pioneer comes with growing pains” and insists that its network is still insanely reliable and will not rest until its 4G LTE network performs “at the very highest levels” that customers have come to expect.
No reasons were given for the recent 4G blackouts. The only thing we know is that “each incident has been different from a technical standpoint” and that Verizon’s engineers have fixed them and moved on.
Verizon is taking some actions to prevent nationwide outages again.
“We are taking a number of steps, working closely with our network suppliers, to ensure the integrity of our 4GLTE Network,” said Verizon. “We continue to fortify and improve its performance, and our goal is that our 4GLTE Network meets the same high standards that our 3G Network has set for performance and reliability. Among the numerous measures we have taken or will take are: geographic segmentation, which enables us to isolate, contain and rectify network performance issues, and maintain service to the majority of customers when an issue does develop; and software fixes that we have developed, tested and applied regularly – and will continue to do so. Both will improve performance and reliability.”
The company does not admit to any issues with its 3G network, but does say that it has proactively moved large blocks of users from its 4G network to its 3G network (like on 12/28), when the 4G network was having issues. This transition seems to take time and many users (like us) were left without any data connectivity at all for some time. This complete loss of data has happened to us at least four times in the last week or so, leading us to wonder if the 4G outages are more common than we thought. We reached out to Verizon for clarification, but the media contact listed in the press statement is on vacation.
Again, if you’ve experienced 4G and 3G issues, let us know when, where, and with what devices in the comments below.
