Thousands of Verizon Communications Inc. VZ customers across the United States were left unable to make calls or send texts on Saturday after a widespread outage disrupted service for hours, drawing sharp criticism over the company's slow communication.

The outage began around noon, according to monitoring site Down Detector, which logged more than 23,000 reports at its peak, as reported by The Independent.

Nearly 60% of complaints involved mobile devices, with many users saying their phones were stuck in SOS mode, leaving them unable to connect to the network.

Frustrated customers turned to social media to vent, with many calling Verizon's silence "shameful."

"When you think your phone is broken so you spend hours trying to fix it, then you drive to the @Verizon store to find out there's a nationwide outage… instead of Verizon letting people know,” another user added.

By 9 p.m. ET, roughly 7,000 reports remained. Minutes later, Verizon issued its first update on X, saying engineers were working to restore service.

Late Saturday night, the company confirmed service had been "fully restored following today's software-related service disruption" and pledged to monitor the system for further issues.

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In July, the company reported a 5.2% year-over-year revenue increase, reaching $34.5 billion and surpassing analyst expectations of $33.57 billion.

The growth was fueled by strong performance in its wireless and broadband businesses across multiple market segments. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $1.22, topping the consensus estimate of $1.19.

Price Action: Verizon shares have gained 10% year to date and were up 0.068% in after-hours trading at last check, according to Benzinga Pro.

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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

Photo courtesy: Karolis Kavolelis/Shutterstock