Verizon resolves data outage in Eastern U.S.

Verizon Wireless confirmed that some customers across parts of the Eastern United States lost data service this morning, but said the problem has been fixed. Voice service was unaffected.

Verizon spokesman Tom Pica told FierceWireless some customers were unable to access data services entirely, and others were kicked down from Verizon's 3G EV-DO network to its 1X data network. He did not say how many customers were affected by the outage, but emphasized it was not "nationwide" as some earlier reports had indicated.

Pica said Verizon traced the problem to a software glitch, and managed to fix it by 8 a.m. EST. Pica said Verizon, which relentlessly advertises the reliability of its network, is investigating the root cause of the outage.

Verizon is not the only wireless player to suffer data mishaps. In December, Research In Motion suffered two major BlackBerry service outages in less than a week. In December, T-Mobile USA experienced a voice and data service outage in the southern part of the country and in Puerto Rico. In early November, T-Mobile said that service disruptions shut down voice and data access for roughly 1.7 million customers in locations across the country.

For more:
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)
- see this Engadget post

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