Some Verizon Wireless customers on the South Orange campus experienced a network blackout on Wednesday, Feb. 23.
The service issues occurred Wednesday morning between the estimated hours of 10:30 a.m. and 12 p.m.
Senior Krystle Mendoza said it affected phone calls, texts and her BlackBerry Messenger.
"I kept restarting my phone thinking it was the phone itself that was the problem, but when I tried calling someone it never connected," Mendoza said. "I tried bbm'ing someone and that didn't go through, so I figured it might be the network."
Junior Kelly Joao also experienced problems with her phone this morning.
"My phone looked totally normal but I went to respond to a text around 10 a.m. and it just would say sending for a very long time," Joao said. "I wasn't able to finally send a text till about 12:15 p.m."
According to Joao, phone calls were also impossible to make.
"I tried calling too, and it would go straight to voicemail," Joao said.
Senior Sally Hourigan said not being able to make a phone call was when she knew there was something wrong.
"At about 10:30 a.m., I attempted to send a text to one of my friends, and it didn't go through," Hourigan said. "Sometimes that happens to me but I waited a few seconds and nothing came in, I tried calling and didn't even hear the ringing of the phone."
The network blackout caused inconvenience for students aside from the basic network issues.
"I was a little upset about the situation because I was supposed to meet up with people for lunch, and I couldn't get in touch with them," Joao said.
The blackout also caused issues for Hourigan.
The second I realized my phone wasn't working, I jumped," Hourigan said. "I am a very busy person, and I really need to have a working phone."
Hourigan said she quickly got on the SHUFLY and went to the Verizon store in town assuming that the problem was her phone.
"I quickly got on the SHUFLY and went to the Verizon store in South Orange, but they couldn't do anything," Hourigan said. "Another Seton Hall student was there, and we decided to take a trip to the Livingston Mall."
After arriving at the Livingston Mall at about 11:45 a.m., Hourigan said it occurred to her that it could be a problem with the tower at Seton Hall.
"I called my roommate and sure enough the phone call went through," Hourigan said.
After only a couple of hours, students said normal service resumed.
"I'm happy they were able to fix the problem quickly," Joao said.
Nothing regarding the Verizon outage could be found on the Verizon Wireless website or their Twitter account which informs followers of service outages and problems via Tweets.
Ashley Duvall can be reached at Ashley.duvall@student.shu.edu
