Incoming and outgoing calls and texts for many Verizon customers in Charleston were reportedly not working for several hours. Verizon Wireless confirmed a service outage in the region, and said at about 3 p.m. the problem was fixed. It was a fiber-related issue, the company confirmed late in the day. In the morning, the company said "a connectivity issue is causing a service interruption in the Charleston area." Engineers were working to "resolve this issue quickly," she added. Outages began mid-morning on Wednesday, ultimately lasting about four hours. The network problem affected many City of Charleston employees, a spokeswoman for the city said in an email at about 11:30 a.m. Ninety-eight percent of city employees use Verizon. Others said on social media the interruption began earlier in the day for them. Jack Handegan III, owner of the local pre-owned car dealership Handsome Motors, said he had to stop conducting business when his cell phone lost service. Handegan doesn't have a landline. He said he lost service at about 11 a.m. The small business owner said he couldn't even set his voicemail to alert customers he wouldn't be able to take their calls Wednesday. Few answers ever came to light when a similarly lengthy outage for AT&T customers happened about two years ago. State agencies don't typically track cell phone outages, The Post and Courier reported, and while companies are required to report such problems to the Federal Communications Commission, the agency tends not to release information about major outages. After a snipped fiber cable caused a massive wireless outage on AT&T’s network across th… Reach Mary Katherine Wildeman at 843-937-5594. Follow her on Twitter @mkwildeman.
Verizon Wireless Wireless has confirmed a "fibre-related issue" was responsible for a recent four-hour outage in Charleston. A spokeswoman for the city, where 98% of employees use Verizon Wireless, said the loss of service, which lasted from 11 am to 3 pm, affected many people.