Story perspectives

Krispy Kreme Offers Free Donuts Amid Verizon Outage

1/16/2026

Summary

Story summary

Krispy Kreme, the donut chain, will give away free Original Glazed doughnuts today from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in response to Verizon Communications Inc.'s outage.
The connectivity issues began early Wednesday morning and affected major cities including New York and Los Angeles.
Verizon Communications Inc. has acknowledged the outage and is working to resolve it without providing a restoration timeline.
T-Mobile US, Inc. highlighted its network reliability amid chaos.

History

Historical Context

On January 14, 2026, Verizon experienced a widespread network outage affecting major cities like New York and Los Angeles, disrupting voice, text, and data services for hundreds of thousands of users. This incident raised public safety concerns and prompted the FCC to investigate the outage's impact on emergency communications, highlighting the critical need for resilient telecommunications infrastructure in an increasingly connected society.

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Story summary

Krispy Kreme, the donut chain, will give away free Original Glazed doughnuts today from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in response to Verizon Communications Inc.'s outage.
The connectivity issues began early Wednesday morning and affected major cities including New York and Los Angeles.
Verizon Communications Inc. has acknowledged the outage and is working to resolve it without providing a restoration timeline.
T-Mobile US, Inc. highlighted its network reliability amid chaos.

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