Verizon Customers Hit by Major Outage, Phones Stuck in SOS Mode

Thousands of Verizon customers across the U.S. faced a major phone outage on Saturday, leaving many stuck in SOS mode for hours.

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The outage hit coast to coast, with reports from California to Florida. Many users said their entire area had no Verizon service.

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DownDetector showed complaints spiking to nearly 23,000 by mid-afternoon, with users reporting calls, texts, and data not working.

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Phones in SOS mode could only dial 911 or emergency numbers, connecting through other networks but blocking regular service.

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One Los Angeles customer told CBS News their entire family lost service, insisting the issue was bigger than Verizon admitted.

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Verizon acknowledged a “software issue” and said engineers were working quickly to identify and fix the outage.

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By 9 p.m. ET, Verizon posted on X that service was slowly being restored in some areas, though many were still offline.

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This isn’t the first time—Verizon had a similar outage in October 2024, which left over 100,000 customers without service.

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