Massive Verizon outage — live updates and what to do with iPhone in SOS

Verizon engineers trying to identify outage issue

From Verizon's own network status page, the company says it's aware about the ongoing wireless service interruption that's affecting some customers. There's still no work on what exactly has caused the outage, but the company says that network engineers are working to quickly identify the problem and solving it.

The current status

We're about three hours into this outage, and while the Down Detector chart appears to be trending downward, that's still a high level of outage reports. From Northern California, Philip Michaels confirms that he still can't place calls on Verizon's network.

Verizon outage: What we know so far

Here's a quick TikTok report from news editor Dave LeClair on the outage. (Note that this video was produced before AT&T's statement that it's not experiencing an outage.)

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AT&T: No outage here

AT&T may have seen its own spike in reports on Down Detector, but the carrier says there's nothing wrong with its network. In a statement posted on X, AT&T says "Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers are having attempting to connect to users on another network."

The official word from Verizon

The statement Verizon provided to us earlier is now on X for all to see.

Northern California outage

Philip Michaels, our managing editor for mobile, uses Verizon for his wireless service, and he's experiencing the outage as well from his home base outside of San Francisco. When trying to place a call, the phone immediately goes to a Call Ended screen (pictured above) without so much as a ring.

Outage reports starting to recede

Over 2 hours since the first batch of outage reports from Verizon customers, it appears as though they've been receding since 12:00 p.m. ET. It peaked at 104,932 reported outages at 11:13 a.m. ET, but it has since started to decline. Most recently at 11:59 a.m. ET, there were about 75,000 reported outages according to Downdetector.

Reported outages spike in Los Angeles

Although there weren't as many reports as other cities, Los Angeles has quickly garnered a substantial amount of outages from Verizon customers there — with over 3,000 reports in the last hour and growing, according to Downdetector.

Customers using #VerizonOutage to share experience

Verizon customers who are having issues with their devices this morning are going on social media to report their experience so far with the hashtag #VerizonOutage. Over on X (formerly Twitter), many customers are still reporting their devices are stuck in SOS mode. Meanwhile, the same reports are being posted over on Threads.

Verizon responds to reported outages hitting its network

We've reached out to Verizon for a comment about the situation. According to a Verizon spokesperson, "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."

Chicago, Phoenix, and Denver have the most reported outages

Chicago, Phoenix, Denver, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Omaha, Minneapolis, Columbus, and Seattle round out the top locations with the most Verizon outage reports, according to Downdetector

AT&T reported outages are beginning to spike

Meanwhile, rival AT&T is also starting to see a similar spike with reported outages. Even though it's nowhere close to the amount reported by Verizon customers, it's already eclipsed over 1,000 reports according to Downdetector.

Over 100,000 reported Verizon outages

It's been more than an hour since the first reports about customers having issues with Verizon, but now it's topped more than 100,000 reports according to service tracker Downdetector.

While Verizon customers are reporting outages, Visible on the other hand doesn't seem to be affected at all. Downdetector can also verify this as the amount of outages reported from Visible customers is low. This is interesting because Visible uses Verizon's network.

So far, customers reporting issues with Verizon are mostly isolated to the east coast, with New York City and Washington D.C. having the most. Meanwhile, there's a huge spike in the mid west.

Tracking website Downdetector is showing a big spike on an outage with Verizon this morning. Prior to 10:00 a.m. ET, the service appeared to be normal, but now there's an increasing amount of people reporting issues.