Verizon Wireless is
reportedly experiencing its third widespread outage of December.
The outage has been widely
reported in the media, including AllThingsD,
even as customers head to Verizon Wireless’ online
community forums to vent their frustrations. Those customers cited parts of
Florida, Ohio and Washington, D.C., among the nationwide trouble spots, with many
saying both 3G and 4G connectivity are knocked out of commission. Others
claimed some 3G service, but no 4G.
“No 4G or 3G in
Indianapolis,” wrote one commenter. “At least I got a recording when I called
Customer Service stating that they were aware of the problem and were actively
working on it.”
The previous outage, which
hit Dec. 21, affected 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) customers from San Francisco
to New York City. It took Verizon officials several hours to issue an official
statement in that case, in which they said company engineers had resolved an
“issue” with the 4G network during the early-morning hours. Another outage on
Dec. 7 affected an unknown subset of customers.
Verizon’s 4G network reaches
some 200 million users in 190 markets across the United States, and the carrier
offers more than a dozen 4G-enabled smartphones and tablets. The higher-speed
network recently hit its one-year anniversary, and Verizon has given every
indication it wants to continue aggressively building it out to more customers.
On Dec. 12, the carrier
announced an agreement with a company called SpectrumCo—a joint venture between
Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks—to buy 122 Advanced
Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum covering some 259 million people. That deal
cost $3.6 billion. A few days later, it followed that up with the purchase of
Cox Communications’ 20MHz AWS, covering some 28 million people, for around $315
million.
Verizon’s aggressive
spectrum buys have apparently piqued the interest of the federal government.
According to a Dec. 28 report by Bloomberg,
the Department of Justice is reportedly investigating Verizon’s spectrum deals to
determine whether they could hurt competition in both the wireless and cable
industries. A DOJ spokesperson told Bloomberg that the agency’s Antitrust
Division was examining the deals.
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