On January 16, 2026, Andrew R. Garbarino, Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, requested briefings from Verizon and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) following a nationwide service outage. The outage left many customers unable to call or text for several hours.
In his letter to Verizon and the FCC, Chairman Garbarino highlighted concerns about the scale and duration of the disruption. He pointed out that over 40,000 public safety agencies rely on Verizon’s network for communications. According to Garbarino, “Verizon is the largest mobile network in the United States, and this outage affected tens of thousands of customers, including components of the federal government, with more than 2.3 million outage reports. The scale and duration of the outage raises serious concerns and questions regarding the strength and security of the Verizon network. These concerns include reliability for emergency services and impact on both state and federal government operations. As of today, Verizon has yet to provide a public explanation regarding the cause of the outage.”
The chairman’s request aims to obtain additional information from both organizations as lawmakers seek answers about what caused the widespread disruption and how similar events can be prevented in future.
