The exact reason for the long outage wasn’t released but Verizon did provide some insight. In a statement to USA Toda y. Verizon said the outage was caused by a software issue and it is reviewing the incident.

(Gray News) - Verizon customers across the U.S. are reporting service problems, indicating a possible major outage. According to DownDetector, Verizon users began reporting problems around noon Jan. 14. About an hour later, nearly 200,000 users reported issues with the service provider.

Tens of thousands of people — more than 180,000 at one point — across the United States reported issues using Verizon Wednesday. Verizon said it was aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers.

Verizon, the country's largest cellphone provider, apologized Wednesday night after issues lasting much of the day left subscribers suddenly left without service and stuck in "SOS" mode.