Technology

Verizon service outage impacts customers across the country

By Staff Reports • •

NBC Universal, Inc. A day-long internet outage spread across the country Monday, pushing people off the internet, unable to use their phones. Business and tech reporter Scott Budman reports. 

A massive cellphone service outage appeared to be impacting customers across the country Monday morning.

It was affecting Wi-Fi for hundreds of thousands of phone and laptop users and even slowing some emergency services in the Bay Area.

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Starting around 6:30 a.m., Verizon outage reports began to spike on Downdetector.com. By 8:15 a.m., more than 100,000 reports had been submitted on the site with the reports coming from across the country, including New York, California and Michigan. Searches related to Verizon on Google also spiked around the same time.

Over 100,000 users across the U.S. reported issues with their Verizon cell service on Monday.

Some customers were complaining their phone was going into "SOS" mode, which Apple says means your phone is not connected to a cellular network.

Is there a Verizon network outage?

Verizon released a statement to NBC News: "We are aware of an issue impacting service for some customers. Our engineers are engaged and we are working quickly to identify and solve the issue."

The telecommunications company was responding to users on its support account on X saying, "We understand the importance of staying connected, and would be happy to take a look at what's occurring. Please send us a DM, and we can jump right in!" and "Hello! I know how frustrating this may be and how important it is to have reliable service. Send us a DM to address any concerns you may have today."

Users also reported issues accessing Verizon's support page on its website.

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What is SOS mode?

Emergency SOS allows iPhone users to make automatic calls to emergency services and share their location with them when they don't have cellular service.

iPhone users can also create emergency contacts that will receive a text message of the user's location after the emergency call ends. Emergency services will receive updates on changes to location for a limited time after the user enters SOS mode. If a user has location services off, it will automatically turn on temporarily.

Once location is shared, users will get a reminder to stop sharing their location every four hours for 24 hours. To shut off location sharing, users can tap the status bar and select "Stop Sharing Emergency Location."

Users can also text emergency services via satellite on all iPhone 14 or later models when no cellular service or Wi-Fi is available. iPhone 14 or later and Apple Watch also have Crash Detection.

Verizon cellular customers were taking to the internet and social media Monday morning to report service issues.

How to call emergency services in SOS mode

For iPhone 8 or later:

  1. Press and hold the side button and one of the volume buttons until the Emergency SOS slide appears.
  2. Drag the Emergency Call slider to call emergency services. If you continue to hold down the side button and volume button, instead of dragging the slider, a countdown begins and an alert sounds. If you release the buttons after the countdown, your iPhone automatically calls emergency services.

For iPhone 7 or earlier:

  1. Rapidly press the side (or top) button five times. The Emergency Call slider will appear.
  2. Drag the Emergency SOS slider to call emergency services.

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