UPDATED: Verizon Outage Blankets Southern California

Verizon’s famous catchphrase “Can you hear me now?” came back to bite the company Friday when customers from Los Angeles to San Diego lost phone service.

In a statement to Patch, Verizon confirmed the outage, which began around 1 p.m. and ended shortly after 5:30 p.m.

"Earlier today, Verizon Wireless experienced a service disruption affecting voice service in parts of Los Angeles and San Diego and surrounding communities," Verizon spokeswoman Heidi Flato said by email. "Technicians worked quickly to resolve the issue and service was fully restored at 5:38 p.m. this evening. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."

The outage extended from Santa Barbara down to San Diego, including Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties, along with parts of the Inland Empire, according to the website DownDetector.com.

With millions of people in the region, it didn’t take long for the Twitter furor to erupt.

“Dear @Verizon, due to your #service #outage, we can expect a deduction on our next bill, right? Because "service" is kinda part of the deal,” wrote Timothy Ryan Cole.

Mario Sellittti tweeted "‏@VZWSupport major outage, and you've been silent for 9 hours. Stay classy, @verizon"

City News Service contributed to this report.