
Wednesday was a scary day for Verizon Communications (VZ) and its customers. A widespread service outage affected cellular data and voice services for much of the day, prompting emergency alerts in Washington and New York, as well as a lot of negative social media commentary.
Such an outage is also nerve-racking for Verizon shareholders, as any widespread outage raises questions about a company’s cybersecurity, structural integrity, and ability to maintain consistent operations. Verizon has announced that the outage was caused by a software issue and is offering $20 credits to customers.