Verizon’s service outage is due to a software issue, but details are still elusive

after Verizon experienced widespread outages throughout the day This week, which affected two million potential customers, the cause remains elusive. The company is offering a $20 credit to affected customers, which appears to be rolling out via text and in the myVerizon app.

Verizon did not respond to a request for clarification on what happened. You stated that the issue was a “software issue” and that there was no indication of a “cybersecurity issue” in a statement to Mashable Thursday morning.

The loss in service was unique because of its longevity. Unlike Previous cellular outagesthis was not region-specific and affected users across the United States. when Natural disasters If cell phone towers go down or equipment malfunctions, the effects are felt in specific cities or areas. We’ve seen reports (and CNET staff have shared) of service disruptions in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Hawaii, California, and elsewhere.

Until Verizon shares more information, we can piece together some possibilities.

Analyst Roger Entner Recon Analyticsa communications research company, suspects a bug in the feature update, based on how devices are affected. “The 5G SA (standalone) core appears to have crashed during a simple feature change,” he wrote to CNET.

Entner noted that the outage was limited to new high-end devices in select markets where the Verizon 5G SA core is deployed, which is why the outage was not felt everywhere. 5G SA core refers to a network that uses only 5G technology and does not rely on the older 4G LTE infrastructure.

Entner also noted that the timing of the outage was unusual. “When carriers do massive updates, they do so between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.,” he said, suggesting it could be due to an input error or an automated failure. “The early afternoon onset of the incident suggests there are ‘fat fingers’ for a smaller change to cascade through the system.”

Lee W. McKnightThe associate professor at Syracuse University’s College of Information Studies believes the problem arose with a virtual network function (VNF) update failure, which led to a “data bypass/cascading failure of other VNFs that were collateral damage from the first failure,” he wrote in an email exchange.

This also explains, McKnight says, why so many customers reported that their services temporarily resumed, only to fail again. “Like an engine stalling, if all the Verizon VNFs are not in sync (or) well coordinated, the network will be out of key,” he said.

A VNF is a virtual service that runs on cloud platforms, rather than dedicated hardware. For that reason, McKnight’s solution going forward is that major carriers need to provide more paid training to their technical staff “into what they are now: cloud software engineers,” he says.

Although we cannot confirm a specific reason for this outage, it is frequent Reddit commenters (Some who claim to have worked at Verizon) place some blame on Verizon’s recent layoffs, which Removal of approximately 13,000 employeesMany of them are high-tech engineers with years of experience. Some online discussions speculate on common causes of network outages, such as infrastructure damage, technical errors, or server failure, among others.

This is a developing story. Follow all CNET Verizon News To learn more about network outages.