Verizon confirms there are problems with phone calls in Southern California

Many Verizon customers in Southern California are reporting difficulties making calls on Tuesday afternoon, and the company has confirmed to The Verge that there is a “network issue” affecting parts of the region.

“We are experiencing a network issue impacting voice services for some customers in parts of Southern California,” a Verizon spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. “Our engineers have identified the issue and are working to resolve it as quickly as possible.”

If you are having trouble making calls, the spokesperson recommended putting your device in airplane mode or restarting your phone, which they said should fix the issues. And in response to one person on Twitter, Verizon’s support account recommended using Wi-Fi “if possible.”

I’ve found many examples of people reporting problems making phone calls in Southern California, but it’s not clear exactly how far the outage extends or exactly which areas might be affected. Downdetector’s map of user reports strongly indicates that the outage is affecting Los Angeles, San Diego, and the surrounding areas.

Image: Downdetector

As of 4:39PM ET, Downdetector counted more than 8,000 reports of problems with Verizon. Reports on Downdetector have since fallen, but I’m still seeing reports of issues on Twitter.

Update April 27th, 6:06PM ET: Added statement from Verizon.