It must have been so bad I didn't that my life stopped .. because for a nationwide outage I heard nothing about it, nor noticed any issue on my Droid, and I use data CONSTANTLY. I do that pretty much to just suck up as much as I can from Verizon.
I'm no mouthpiece for VZ, but my service with them has been far better than the Death Star, not to mention my Droid wasn't locked out like this ... nor is my wife's Droid Eris.
