Verizon service restored to Fort Wayne area

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) For five hours Friday, several Verizon customers in the Fort Wayne area didn't have service.  Service has since been restored, but without the use of a cell phone, many people had a tough time communicating.

According to Michelle Gilbert, public relations manager with Verizon, a third party vendor's resource failed Friday morning.  That means something the company relies on to get the right technology to its cell sites stopped working.  Gilbert said it was a non-network issue.

 John Felts with Visit Fort Wayne said Friday morning's outage from 6:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. caused major issues for some people traveling to Fort Wayne for the Regional Neighborhood Network Conference.

"Right now we have a convention going on, the RNNC.  It’s the first day of the event but people are having a little trouble getting around, communicating which rooms to go to, but they’re handling it pretty well right now through old school communication like actually going up to desks and asking for information," said Felts.

Several people commented on NewsChannel 15's Facebook page about the outages Friday morning.  Lindsay Lockwood Comer wrote, "...I work in a daycare and parents can't text some of us to check on their kids because a lot of us have Verizon!" 

Jillian Lockhart wrote, "…Our credit card machine is down at my salon! No good!"

Fort Wayne's city-issued cell phones have Verizon.  City leaders said they experienced outages, but overall it was a big inconvenience.