How bad was the Verizon outage? Really bad.

Here's the first thing mobile network experts want you to know when taking stock of the great Verizon service outage of January 2026. It won't be the last — and that being on AT&T or T-Mobile won't make you immune either.

Expecting a modern mobile network to function around the clock, around the year, like water, power or gas utilities, "isn't practically possible," says Octavio Garcia, Forrester analyst and mobile industry veteran. The infrastructure involved (cellphone towers, satellites...