When Verizon’s mobile network went down for hours, thousands of users suddenly found their phones stuck in SOS mode, and many businesses discovered too late just how much of their daily operations quietly depend on one carrier. From wireless point of sale terminals to building access controls, the outage exposed a hard truth: if your IoT devices ride on a single cellular network, your business may be one glitch away from operational downtime.
Beyond Phones: What Really Went Down
The headlines focused on frustrated smartphone users, but behind the scenes, a wide range of business-critical systems were impacted. IoT devices that rely on reliable cellular connectivity simply had nothing to talk to.
Examples of impacted IoT driven services include:
- Smart point of sale systems and kiosks that could not process payments when their LTE modems lost connectivity.
- Security cameras, access control panels, and alarm systems that went offline or lost cloud recording during the disruption.
- Remote industrial sensors, logistics trackers, and fleet telematics devices that stopped reporting status or location in real time.
For a modern business, a cellular outage is no longer just a communications inconvenience as it is a full-scale network outage across dozens or hundreds of distributed endpoints.
The Scale of the Problem: 2025–2026 IoT Stats
The timing of this outage matters because it arrives in the middle of the biggest connectivity boom in history. That growth amplifies both opportunity and risk.
Key data points business leaders should know:
- The number of connected IoT devices reached about 18.5–18.8 billion globally by the end of 2024 and is on track to top 21 billion by the end of 2025, with forecasts pointing toward 40 billion devices by 2030.
- Most connections now ride over Wi-Fi and cellular, meaning more business critical systems depend on carrier networks and internet access than ever before.
- Recent outage and downtime reports show triple digit weekly increases in ISP and network incidents in the U.S., underscoring that connectivity disruptions are becoming more frequent, not less.
For executives, the takeaway is simple: your business continuity plan cannot just focus on servers and email anymore as it must account for IoT downtime, carrier outages, and edge devices as well.
What Counts as an IoT Device (It’s More Than You Think)
When people hear “IoT,” they often picture smart speakers or consumer gadgets. In reality, many core business systems already qualify as Internet of Things endpoints.
Common business IoT categories include:
- Building and facilities: smart thermostats, lighting controls, energy meters, badge readers, and connected security cameras.
- Operations and manufacturing: PLCs, industrial sensors, production line monitors, SCADA components, and barcode scanners that feed cloud dashboards.
- Retail and customer experience: kiosks, digital signage, inventory beacons, and wireless POS terminals that use LTE/5G for backup connectivity.
Each device is both a potential single point of failure when connectivity drops and a potential attack surface if it is poorly configured or left unpatched.
Why Outages Happen: The IT Story Behind the Headlines
From an IT perspective, the Verizon outage is part of a broader pattern: increasingly software driven networks mean configuration mistakes or software glitches can take down huge portions of the infrastructure at once. As carriers modernize with virtualized network functions and automation, a single faulty update can cascade into multi-hour downtime.
Recent analysis of major carrier outages shows:
- Both Verizon and AT&T have tied large outages to software issues or misconfigured network elements, not physical damage.
- Outages can ripple to downstream partners, MVNOs, and IoT providers, knocking out service for thousands of organizations beyond the carrier’s direct customers.
- Even incidents measured in minutes can disrupt transaction flows, logistics visibility, and security monitoring, leading to outsized business downtime costs.
This makes proactive IT infrastructure management, network redundancy, and business continuity planning a strategic priority—not a “nice to have.”
How Century Solutions Group Helps De-Risk Your IoT World
For small and midsize organizations, keeping up with this complexity in-house is a challenge. That is where a trusted IT managed service provider becomes critical to translating outage headlines into resilient, day-to-day operations.
Century Solutions Group can help businesses:
- Design redundant network architectures that include dual SIM cellular routers, secondary ISPs, and intelligent failover so critical IoT systems stay online even during carrier outages.
- Implement IoT device management practices: asset inventory, network segmentation, secure configurations, and regular firmware updates across cameras, sensors, and industrial devices.
- Build and test disaster recovery and business continuity plans that explicitly cover IoT dependent workflows such as payment processing, access control, remote monitoring, and more.
With a mature managed IT services program, business leaders gain visibility into their entire connected environment and a roadmap to reduce outage risk before the next carrier issue hits.
Action Steps for Business Leaders in 2026
The Verizon outage will not be the last major connectivity event in 2026 but it can be the one that prompts organizations to modernize. A few concrete steps to take now:
- Audit all connected devices and map which ones rely on a single carrier or ISP, then prioritize critical systems for redundancy.
- Segment IoT devices onto dedicated secure networks, separating them from core servers and business applications to contain both outages and potential breaches.
- Partner with a trusted IT MSP like Century Solutions Group to monitor, manage, and secure your hybrid mix of on-premises, cloud, and IoT infrastructure.
For Atlanta businesses and organizations across the Southeast, Century Solutions Group helps turn complex IoT and network challenges into stable, secure, and scalable IT environments that keep operations running, even when a major carrier goes dark.