Verizon is blaming the numerous 4G outages – three of which happened this month – on “growing pains.”
The most recent instance happened this week, Verizon confirmed, blaming it on an unexpected glitch.
It has been a frustrating month for the carrier’s growing base of high-end 4G LTE phones. Not only has the fast-speed network become inexplicably unplugged three times, but the outages also took down 3G connectivity for 4G-equipped devices.
So during times when people may have needed to coordinate travel plans or send an e-mail to friends, users were either forced to use an embarrassingly slow 2G connection or no connection at all.
In an interview with Gigaom.com, Verizon VP of network engineering said, “Being the pioneers [of LTE], we’re going to experience some growing pains.”
The closest he got to an apology was saying, “These issues we’ve been experiencing are certainly regrettable but they were unforeseeable.”
Some customers have reported receiving partial refunds from Verizon, but only if they call up and complain. There has been no automatic credit to those affected.
As for what Verizon plans to do to prevent similar issues from happening in the future, the carrier will segment its network so that when one small thing goes wrong, it doesn’t take out the entire nationwide infrastructure. It is also constantly performing maintenance and upgrades throughout the system.
For now, though, buy your Verizon LTE devices with a grain of salt.
