(Reuters)
Verizon Wireless suffered outages across the United States on its recently launched high-speed 4G network that have prevented some customers from accessing any Internet data.
"We are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible," Thomas Pica, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, said late on Wednesday. He declined to comment on the reason for the service interruptions, which he said customers had been reporting for about 24 hours.
The outages are embarrassing for Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications and the UK's Vodafone Group. It is widely recognized as having a network that is superior to those of rivals, including AT&T, and it heavily advertises the quality of its network.
It also comes in the midst of the crucial holiday season as the company promotes 4G Android smartphones from Motorola Mobility, Samsung and HTC.
It is at least the second outage since Verizon launched its 4G data service. Trade publication FierceWireless said the company suffered a major service disruption in April of this year.
The company said that some high-speed data customers could not access the Internet at all, while others got intermittent service and some had no problems.
Verizon's voice, text-messaging and 3G data services were operating normally, Pica said.
The company introduced its 4G LTE network in 38 markets and more than 60 airports in December 2010. It has said it expects to have that technology covering more than 175 markets by the end of this year and its entire U.S. footprint by the end of 2013.
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