Data Outage Affecting Cell Carriers in Kalamazoo County, Battle Creek

No, it's not just you!

UPDATE 8/16/24: Upon driving to work this morning I noticed my 5G data had been restored. Still no official word from Verizon on the outage. Are you still experiencing trouble?

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

If you've suddenly lost the ability to receive texts and phone calls you may be affected by service degradation issues in the greater Kalamazoo area.

I happened to notice it about 3:00 p.m. this afternoon, August 15, when I looked down at my phone and saw I had zero bars of service; not only that my phone had gone into S.O.S. mode.

That's never good.

I wasn't able to find any information until I check my cell phone carrier's website, Verizon, to check the network status. That's when I saw this message:

The outage isn't limited to Verizon customers either. According to the Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Office:

The Verizon Wireless network is experiencing major service degradation issues in the Kalamazoo area.If you have carriers using the network, including Verizon Wireless, Spectrum Mobile, US Mobile, Xfinity Mobile, Total Wireless, Lively, or potentially TracFone, and are unable to make an emergency voice call or text to 9-1-1, please try to connect to Wi-Fi service(s) and retry again. If you are still unable to get through, you will need to use a different device with another service provider.

So far it seems the outage is limited to Kalamazoo County and the greater Battle Creek, MI area. Upon checking the network status in Allegan and Grand Rapids, MI everything appears to be status quo.

Not only is the outage inconvenient, but dangerous as people attempting to reach emergency services may be unable to. At the time of this writing the only information Verizon could provide regarding an estimated time to restore service was a 12-24 hour window.

Keep checking back for updates.