Amid Verizon outage, Bay Area emergency services, business proceed as usual

Amid a nationwide Verizon outage that impacted phone service from coast to coast, business and emergency services in the Bay Area largely continued operations as usual on Monday.

More than 100,000 people across the country reported issues with their Verizon phone service Monday, with the peak of reports coming around between 8 and 9 a.m., according to Downdetector, a service that monitors technology outages. Verizon announced Monday afternoon that services were beginning to come back online, but the company did not confirm how many of its more than 110 million customers in the U.S. were affected.

“We live and die on our phones,” said Rob Enderle, a technology analyst. An outage “creates a fairly big drag.”

The San Jose Police Department received no reports that 911 calls were impacted by the outage, a spokesperson said. Both the Oakland Police Department and the San Francisco Police Department also both reported that there were no communication issues.

The San Jose Fire Department uses FirstNet for calls, which is supported by AT&T, so its communication system had “minimal impact,” said a representative from the department.

In addition to emergency call systems remaining active, even phones without service are able to make calls to emergency services.

“If you are a Verizon customer and are not able to make any calls, you should still be able to call 911 as long as your phone is able to connect to another carrier. Your phone might say ‘Emergency calls only’ or ‘SOS,’” said the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management.

If your phone still cannot make a call, the Department of Emergency Management recommended connecting to a Wi-Fi network to use Wi-Fi calling, use a landline or Internet-based phone or attempt to get ahold of a family member or friend with another phone carrier to make the call for you.

Enderle added that an outage can be dangerous during this time of year when there are large weather events occurring at the same time.

An outage of this scale “can be incredibly damaging to government operations of everything from military to just making sure the police arrive on time to a bigger disaster,” he said.

The main impact of the outage would be from a commercial standpoint, said Tim Bajarin, a technology consultant, but that would mostly be a “nuisance” with potential workarounds.

“A lot of firms aren’t set up for that, so then you’re scrambling around trying to find alternative ways to make contact,” Enderle said.

Bajarin said that most businesses — even small ones — have Internet access, which provides a host of calling alternatives for those facing outages. The only business that would be significantly impacted would those that rely on transactions that take place somewhere without Wi-Fi, such as a farmer’s marker, he added.

Originally Published: September 30, 2024 at 3:16 p.m.