Today Verizon have suffered the second major outage within the past two weeks. Customers have reported their issues via the carrier’s support forums and Twitter. Verizon’s data network is down in various areas of coverage in the U.S, and users are having trouble getting connected, or are dealing with much slower access. The Verge reports it has gotten official confirmation from Verizon about the outage, but no specific details – including the time users can expect normal service to resume – have been revealed.

“Customers of the big red carrier are reporting a lack of 3G and 4G network connectivity from pretty much everywhere: California, Rhode Island, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Jersey, and New York have all apparently been affected.

We’ve spoken to a Verizon support representative who confirmed the outage but was not authorized to discuss the extent of the issues with the press.”

This latest incident, and the outage on the company’s 4G LTE network two weeks ago, appear alongside a couple of initiatives by the carrier to expand and enhance its data networks.  Just this month Verizon announced an agreement to   acquire 122 service licenses from Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks for $3.6 billion. According to reports, the company is also working on enhancing user experience with the addition of a self-service system for apps. It works by allowing apps to transmit their optimal requirements to Verizon, which will then be provided for a fee.

Verizon is not the only one that’s beefing up its infrastructure to address growing demand. Sprint has plans to set up its own LTE network in 2013, and it’s trying to extend the availability of its unlimited data plans to the new high-speed technology. Hopefully the same can be said of the actual availability of the network.

photo credit: Explore Amarillo