Verizon Communications has received the final approvals needed to buy fiber-optic broadband provider Frontier Communications after agreeing to some concessions to California regulators, including a small-business spending commitment.

Verizon said it would "work through the night until service is restored" and said it would provide "account credits" for any customer who lost service.

Nearly 200,000 users reported their service being disrupted on Wednesday, according to Downdetector, with reports flooding in around noon. A majority of the issues were reported to be related to mobile phone connectivity, at 61%, followed by users having no signal, at 35%, and mobile internet disruptions, at 4%.

Tess Coward, a 27-year-old PR professional based in New York City, woke up feeling under the weather on Wednesday. But without the ability to make phone calls or receive text messages, she couldn’t get in touch with her doctor or log into the provider’s patient portal.

Experts have told USA TODAY such outages can be dangerous and will continue. Verizon apologized to its customers and said it would be offering credits to everyone who was impacted. A spokesperson told USA TODAY that the outage was tied to a software issue and that the company is "conducting a full review of what happened.