Verizon fixes technical issue blamed for nationwide 4G LTE outage

Wireless provider Verizon is America’s favorite national network, but it is not immune to an occasional case of the sniffles. A technical issue is being blamed for a service disruption that knocked out 4G LTE service to wireless customers nationwide, and left them without high-speed voice, data and SMS service. The disruption began on Tuesday evening and was resolved by Wednesday night.

On the Verizon Twitter feed the company announced, “Verizon Wireless 4GLTE service has returned to normal after the company’s network operations team resolved a technical issue,” without specifying the nature of the technical issue, how many people were affected, or what steps were taken to remedy the problem. Verizon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Verizon told Reuters that 3G data, voice and text messaging were back to normal.

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This week’s outage is the second for the company this year. In April, Verizon suffered from a nationwide outage to its 4G LTE network. Nicola Palmer, Verizon Wireless vice president of network operations, boasted that her company had avoided troubled with its nationwide 4G LTE rollout at VentureBeat’s Mobile Summit just days before April’s outage. Hubris anyone?

Verizon is America’s largest mobile phone carrier, with 107 million subscribers. The Verizon 4G LTE network debuted in December of 2010 and is currently available in 38 regional markets and 60 airports. The company has plans to expand its high speed wireless capability to 175 markets. By contrast, AT&T’s 4G LTE service was launched this September and covers subscribers in five cities.

Verizon Wireless was formed in a joint collaboration between UK’s Vodafone Group and Verizon communications, which also sells broadband Internet and cable television service in the U.S. Verizon consistently ranks as the top national wireless carrier and was chosen as America’s best provider for the second straight year by Consumer Reports readers.