[cm2187]

But is it a bug or network saturation under people wishing each others a happy new year? (And Perhaps more so with a selfie than a text msg as prev yrs)

[toast0]

Given that it's cdma, moat likely the user was in the US or thereabouts, so the leap second was several hours before local new year.

[nullc]

Happy new year at midnight UTC ... in the Pacific timezone?

Doubtful. :) I've observed a similar outage at the last leapsecond (and in that case, dropped me off a call-- which is why I even checked this time.)