Nationwide Verizon Outage Stops Long-Distance Calls To Landlines

Verizon wireless customers across a large swath of the northeastern United States and elsewhere lost the ability to send text messages, surf the internet and make outgoing calls to landlines Wednesday morning, the company said.

It's unclear what caused the outage, which affected wireless customers nationwide who were trying to place long-distance calls to landlines got a message telling them all circuits were busy and directing them to try the calls later, Verizon said in a statement.

That issue was resolved around 6:30 a.m. ET, but Verizon is still investigating the problem.

The Verizon outage did not affect wireless-to-wireless, local or 911 calls, company spokesman Chris McCann said in the statement to The New York Times. Though some customers reported difficulty, McCann said the outage didn't affect texting and internet use.

A Verizon outage map on the website Down Detector hows the extent of the outage problems, and that problems were persistent in several major U.S. cities late Wednesday morning.

Although 911 emergency dispatch service was never interrupted, police departments around the country advised residents of the outage on social media. The Reno, Nevada, police department reminded residents that "911 is still for life-threatening emergencies only." In Maryland, the Frederick Police Department advised residents trying to reach the department to use a different landline.