Verizon Wireless outage puts phones in SOS mode without cell service
Verizon Wireless is suffering a massive outage in the US, with customers reporting their phones stuck in SOS mode with no cellular service.
“We are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers. Our engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly. We understand how important reliable connectivity is and apologize for the inconvenience,” Verizon confirmed on X.
“Verizon engineering teams are continuing to address today’s service interruptions. Our teams remain fully deployed and are focused on the issue. We understand the impact this has on your day and remain committed to resolving this as quickly as possible,” shared a later post.
According to DownDetector, customers began reporting the outage around 12 PM ET today, and service remains disrupted for those affected.
Verizon customers affected by the outage will see a SOS symbol on their phones, indicating that only emergency calls can be made.
From customer reports, the outage is impacting people throughout the US and is not set to a particular region or state.
While the outage is not affecting all customers, attempting to call a phone number impacted by the Verizon outage will result in a recording stating that the “called party is temporarily unavailable.”
Cybersecurity researcher vxdb noted that others mobile carriers, such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and US Cellular, are also showing outages during the same timeframes.
GeekFeed also contacted Verizon about the outage and will update the story if we receive a response.
Update 1/14/26 03:19 PM ET: T-Mobile told GeekFeed that they are not impacted by an outage and their network is operating normally.
“T-Mobile’s network is keeping our customers connected, and we’ve confirmed that our network is operating normally and as expected. However, due to Verizon’s reported outage, our customers may not be able to reach someone with Verizon service at this time,” T-Mobile told GeekFeed.
Update 1/14:26 10:45 PM ET: At 10:20 PM ET, the Verizon X account posted that the outage has been resolved, advising customers to restart their devices to reconnect to the network.
“The outage has been resolved. If customers are still having an issue, we encourage them to restart their devices to reconnect to the network,” explains Verizon.
“For those affected, we will provide account credits. Details will be shared directly with customers. We sincerely apologize for the disruption.”
At this time, it is still unclear what caused the outage and Verizon has not shared any details with customers.
