Several hundred Verizon Wireless customers across the Midlands experienced temporary cellphone withdrawal Friday afternoon when their phones went silent for nearly four hours.

The company’s voice service went out shortly after noon, leaving customers unable to make or receive calls, although many could still receive data and send and receive text messages.

The service was restored just after 4 p.m.

Verizon officials would not give a reason Friday for the outage or say how many customers were affected.

Cam Glover of Lexington was among those who lost service. Glover said he got a text message from his wife, who is also a Verizon customer, shortly after noon, saying she could not get through to him on her cellphone. When he tried to call her back, he encountered the same problem.

So for the next few hours, Glover said he had to rely on texts and emails to conduct his business at Big Time Entertainment, which provides entertainment and lighting for special events.

“That’s your main source of communication these days,” Glover said. “Hardly anybody uses landlines anymore. Luckily, I had advertised on my web site that I can be contacted by text.”

Janice Allen of Blythewood first heard about the disruption on Facebook and later got a text from her daughter saying she was trying to call her.

Allen was able to call her daughter a short time later, when service was restored.

Joe Polek of Irmo drove to the Verizon Wireless store in Harbison after he started having phone troubles, only to find store employees outside alerting customers of the interruption.

Some Verizon customers were able to receive calls from landlines or other wireless carriers during the outage but could not initiate calls or receive incoming calls from others with Verizon service.

Reach Rantin at (803) 771-8306.