NORFOLK, Va. — Verizon cellular and internet services have been disrupted for the second time in less than a day across Hampton Roads.
The mass reporting of outages first began around 9:15 p.m., according to outage tracker Downdetector. It peaked around 10 p.m. with over 13,000 reports of an outage, which subsided early Tuesday morning.
Then a second spike in outages was reported just before noon on Tuesday. This outage was shorter, with service restored by 1 p.m.
In addition to Hampton Roads, other major areas that reported outages included the Richmond area as well as Baltimore, Houston, and Philadelphia, Downdetector reports.
Many people took to social media trying to find answers about what caused the service interruption.
Reports of outages appear to have subsided after midnight into early Tuesday morning.
A Verizon spokesperson tells 13News Now that Tuesday's outage was caused after "an excavation crew accidentally cut fiber optic cables that serve cell sites in the Hampton Roads area," which led to a service disruption. The spokesperson added that Verizon engineers have fixed the fiber and services are fully restored.
On Tuesday afternoon, some people were still posting on social media that they were continuing to have issues with Verizon service, particularly in the Isle of Wight and Smithfield areas.
Also with the fiber optic cables being cut on Tuesday, it was not immediately clear what caused Monday night's outage. Strong storms did roll through parts of the region on Monday night, but Hampton Roads, specifically, did not experience any severe weather before or during the outage.