Verizon Wireless has issued an explanation for the service outages that affected users across the United States earlier this week. "Being a pioneer comes with growing pains," read a Dec. 29 statement issued by the carrier. "The recent issues that affected our customers' 4G LTE service were unforeseen despite careful, diligent planning, deployment and ongoing upgrade programs."

The statement claimed that Verizon s 4G LTE connectivity has been available "approximately 99 percent of the time this year."

Verizon Wireless' network experienced three periods of downtime in December. The previous outage, which hit Dec. 21, affected 4G LTE customers from San Francisco to New York City. It took Verizon officials several hours to issue an official statement in that case, in which they said company engineers had resolved an "issue" with the 4G network during the early-morning hours. Another outage on Dec. 7 affected an unknown subset of customers.

Some customers also experienced issues with their 3G connectivity.

In its Dec. 29 statement, the carrier suggested each outage had different causes. "Our engineers have successfully diagnosed those past triggering events, and they have not re-occurred," it read. "We also work diligently to rectify technical problems in the network before they affect any customers."

Verizon s 4G network reaches some 200 million users in 190 markets across the United States, and the carrier offers more than a dozen 4G-enabled smartphones and tablets. The network recently hit its one-year anniversary, and Verizon has given every indication it wants to continue aggressively building it out to more customers.

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