UPDATE: Verizon has confirmed it’ll issue account credits to affected customers, although the exact amount remains unclear.
Original story:
As the Verizon outage continues, a US senator says he’s preparing a bill to require mobile carriers and internet service providers to compensate affected consumers after significant downtime.
In a tweet, Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico) wrote, “I’m working on legislation that would require cable, internet, and phone companies to provide pro-rated refunds when outages last for hours at a time. If you pay for a service, that’s what you should be getting.”
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Luján didn’t elaborate. But the legislation will no doubt be popular with Verizon customers who lost cellular access today, preventing them from making phone calls, texting, or receiving mobile data. On social media, many subscribers are already demanding credits from the carrier.
“Phone bill way too high to be having nationwide outages so often,” tweeted one user.
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There doesn’t appear to be a federal law mandating compensation for cellular outages. But in New York, state lawmakers introduced a bill to force ISPs to provide a prorated bill credit for service outages lasting over an hour. Last year, a California agency also started requiring phone service providers to offer customer credits for prolonged outages or poor service quality.
Verizon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. So it’s unclear if the carrier plans on offering credits to affected customers. But companies tend to do so in order to restore trust, rather than risk losing consumers. Downdetector.com, which has been tracking the outage, has so far received over 1.7 million user reports about the disruption.
But even if compensation is offered, don’t expect a lot. Back in 2024, AT&T gave customers a $5 credit, representing a full day of service, for an outage that lasted at least 12 hours. The Verizon outage has been going on for five hours and counting.
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I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
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