Verizon says network is fine, no DDoS attacks
Other networks also deny having any problems
Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg says the network is ‘keeping up very well’ despite a rise in usage since coronavirus started.
Verizon told FOX Business Monday that its wireless network is operating fine and has not experienced any disruptions or Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks (DDoS) despite claims online of disrupted service.
"Verizon has robust layers of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protections that we monitor 24 x 7 to protect our network and customers,” a Verizon spokesperson said. “We have seen no DDoS activity that would impact our networks today."
“DDoS” was trending on Twitter Monday, and Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, even tweeted that a DDoS attack had occurred. A spokesperson for Lieu said his tweet was “based off public reporting.”
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Verizon also blamed a third-party website that tracks wireless service, Downdetector.com, for the widespread report of disrupted coverage. Downdetector reported thousands of problems from Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and other wireless networks Monday.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VZ | VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC. | 41.26 | +0.59 | +1.45% |
| TMUS | T-MOBILE US INC. | 208.01 | -0.50 | -0.24% |
| T | AT&T INC. | 25.39 | +0.07 | +0.28% |
“We understand Downdetector is falsely reporting Verizon network issues. Sites such as Downdetector.com utilize limited crowdsourced data drawn from sample social posts which are often statistically insignificant or factually incorrect,” a Verizon spokesperson told FOX Business. “These types of sites do not evaluate and confirm the crowd-sourced data that they receive, they simply aggregate it and report it. The result can be faulty reports of network performance interruptions causing wide-spread miscommunication for wireless users."
A spokesperson for Downdetector said the company monitors user-reported issues to identify outages and that most of Monday's problems were with T-Mobile.
"I can confirm that today we saw a large number of user reports of issues with T-Mobile and, to a lesser extent, the other major US carriers," the spokesperson told FOX Business. "User reported issues with T-Mobile peaked today around noon PST with 113,980 reports in the United States."
'ROUTING ISSUE' CAUSE OF T-MOBILE DATA SERVICE PROBLEM
T-Mobile is the only network that has publicly said it is having problems with its service. The company’s president of technology, Neville Ray, tweeted that T-Mobile was fixing a “voice and data issue that has been affecting customers around the country.” T-Mobile’s help page on Twitter said its problems were due to a “widespread routing issue.”
T-Mobile did not respond to a request for comment.
AT&T said Monday that its network is operating normally.
Sprint did not respond to a request for comment.