Verizon and AT&T customers report phones are stuck in SOS: Here's what to do about the widespread outage

A widespread outage affected Verizon customers across the country on Monday. Reports of cell outages flooded onto social media as Verizon worked to fix the problem and addressed myriad complaints from customers online and in-person, until finally reporting that it was restoring service at 5 p.m. Eastern.

According to Downdetector, reports of issues with cellular connection started to flood in at around 10 a.m. on Monday and have steadily climbed, persisting for more than seven hours for some customers.

Below is Laptop Mag 's live blog of reporting and updates as they came in.

A widespread outage is affecting Verizon customers across the country. Reports of disrupted cell service are flooding onto social media as Verizon works to fix the problem.

According to Downdetector, reports of issues with cellular connection started to flood in at around 10 a.m. on Monday and have steadily climbed, persisting well into the afternoon. If your phone is stuck in SOS, don't panic — you're not alone.

Laptop Mag will be covering the outage as updates roll in.

Why is my phone stuck in SOS?

If your phone is stuck in SOS, don't worry, there's probably nothing wrong with your device. There is, however, likely something wrong with your cell provider.

Reports are flooding in on social media about a potential outage affecting Verizon and AT&T customers. It's hard to tell exactly how many people are affected, but according to Downdetector, a website that tracks outages, there were about 100,000 reports from Verizon customers between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Monday, September 30.

Likewise, there was an uptick of reports from AT&T customers during the same period.

Where are the outage reports coming from?

Again, it's difficult to say how many people are affected and where, but according to Downdetector, lots of the reports are coming from the Northeast U.S.

That could just be a matter of time zones, though. Sorry, denizens of California, you may be waking up to some SOS.

Customers aren't happy

Not having cell service can really throw a wrench in your day, and naturally, some people are not pleased with the disruption.

Outage cause unknown

As of 11:45 a.m. ET, neither Verizon nor AT&T has acknowledged the outage. Laptop Mag is monitoring support pages on X and has reached out to Verizon for comment on the issue.

Verizon is working on it

Verizon issued an official statement on its X support page saying that it is aware of the issue and is currently working on it.

Unfortunately, there's still no answer as to what's causing the outage in the first place.

What do I do about my phone being in SOS?

When it comes to regaining cell service, there's little you can do, but that doesn't mean your phone is still completely bricked right now.

If you're in a place that Wi-Fi is accessible, make sure your phone is connected — you can still make calls and receive texts if you're on a Wi-Fi network.

If you're not home, then you'll have to sit tight and wait until service is restored.

Not the first time

We've seen similar outages in the past. In May, for example, AT&T experienced a widespread outage causing major disruptions.

Those issues also included Cricket Wireless and FirstNet, which are under the AT&T umbrella. It's hard to say if that outage is similar in nature to what customers are experiencing now without any official explanation, but the results are definitely the same.

AT&T says its coverage is not affected

According to an update from AT&T, their service has not been affected. In a statement on Twitter, it claims that reports on Downdetector are a reflection of people trying to connect with another customers using Verizon.

Not good for customer satisfaction

Outages are never good, but some customers are taking it extra hard.

On X, users are threatening to leave Verizon for T-Mobile and asking for reimbursements for the down period.

Verizon still ongoing

Users of Verizon, however, are still reporting outages according to Downdetector.

As of 2:20 p.m. ET, comments about service issues are still rolling in.

It's a bad day to be a Verizon employee

If this post on X is any indication, it's probably a bad day to work at a Verizon store. Some customers seem to be showing up in-person to try and resolve issues with their cell service.

The iPhone's secret weapon

If you're affected by the Verizon outage and have an iPhone, there's some good news.

Thanks to satellite connectivity, you can still send and receive messages and make calls. As Wyze employee Matt Van Swol points out, that satellite feature could literally save lives in this situation.

A marathon

After more than 5 hours, many Verizon customers are still experiencing outages. We've seen quite a few outages in our day, but this one appears to be pretty serious.

Verizon recommends Wi-Fi calling

If you’re in an area with wifi, Verizon recommends enabling wifi calling on your phone so you can still make calls and send texts.

The company shared a " Wi-Fi calling at Verizon FAQ ," explaining that voice calling uses 1-5MB of data and a video call uses between 6-30MB of data, depending on resolution.

Wifi calling is a good thing to keep on if you're concerned about data, as it doesn't count toward data limits because those calls don't use Verizon's cellular network — though sometimes there's an access fee to use wifi calling if you're using a public wifi network.

One thing to remember is that wifi calling uses your device's location and wifi network to locate you if you call 911 — though that is less problematic as location precision has improved over the years.

This is why you are asked to add your home address when setting up wifi calling, so first responders have a codified location.

Some people have restored service

At 5:20 p.m. Eastern, reports of disrupted service have declined. Some users on Downdetector have also reported restoration to service, though others are still without.

At 4:44 p.m. Eastern, Downdetector showed more than 35,000 users reporting problems with Verizon , down from a peak of nearly 105,000 at 11:14 a.m. Eastern. A map of outages showed much of the problems being reported on the East Coast and in the South East, affecting cities like Atlanta, New York, and Washington, D.C., though Chicago, Omaha, and Las Vegas also were among the cities with the most reported problems.

It's been a long day for both Verizon and its customers, but the situation could be trending in the right direction. At about 5 p.m. Eastern, Verizon said it's "making progress" on restoring service for customers and issued this update on X :

"Verizon engineers are making progress on our network issue and service has started to be restored. We know how much people rely on Verizon and apologize for any inconvenience some of our customers experienced today. We continue to work around the clock to fully resolve this issue."