As today’s Verizon blackout drags on, Sen. Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n of New Mexico says he’s prepping legislation that would require carriers and ISPs to compensate users for major outages.<\/b>
\nAs the Verizon outage continues, a US senator says he\u2019s preparing a bill to require mobile carriers and internet service providers to compensate affected consumers after significant downtime.
In a tweet, Sen. Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n (D-New Mexico) wrote, \u201cI\u2019m working on legislation that would require cable, internet, and phone companies to provide pro-rated refunds when outages last for hours at a time. If you pay for a service, that\u2019s what you should be getting.\u201d
Luj\u00e1n didn\u2019t elaborate. But the legislation will no doubt be popular with Verizon customers who lost cellular access today, preventing them from making phone calls, texting, or receiving mobile data. On social media, many subscribers are already demanding credits from the carrier.
\u201cPhone bill way too high to be having nationwide outages so often,\u201d tweeted one user.
There doesn\u2019t appear to be a federal law mandating compensation for cellular outages. But in New York, state lawmakers introduced a bill to force ISPs to provide a prorated bill credit for service outages lasting over an hour. Last year, a California agency also started requiring phone service providers to offer customer credits for prolonged outages or poor service quality.
Verizon didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment. So it\u2019s unclear if the carrier plans on offering credits to affected customers. But companies tend to do so in order to restore trust, rather than risk losing consumers. Downdetector.com, which has been tracking the outage, has so far received over 1.7 million user reports about the disruption.
But even if compensation is offered, don\u2019t expect a lot. Back in 2024, AT&T gave customers a $5 credit, representing a full day of service, for an outage that lasted at least 12 hours. The Verizon outage has been going on for five hours and counting.<\/p>\n