Verizon Suffers Massive US-Wide Outage Leaving Hundreds of Thousands Without Service

Verizon customers woke up Wednesday to find their phones stuck in SOS mode. Not fun.

Problems started trickling into Down Detector just before noon Eastern on January 14. By 12:41 PM, the flood had arrived. 175,658 users reported issues with Verizon's mobile services. Another 485 separate reports hit FIOS, Verizon's home fibre Internet branch.

AT&T and T-Mobile didn't escape either. Both carriers saw over 1,800 outage reports each, though as we'll get into later, their networks weren't actually broken.

What Actually Happened

Voice, text, and data services all went down simultaneously. Your 4G and 5G signals? Gone. Replaced with "SOS Only" mode. Calls wouldn't go through. Texts sat in limbo. Data connections vanished.

iPhones displayed the dreaded SOS icon where network bars should be. Android devices showed blank or crossed-out network indicators. You know the drill.

Verizon acknowledged the mess shortly after 1 PM ET, posting on X that engineers were "engaged and working to identify and solve the issue quickly". Translation: they had no idea what broke.

The company never disclosed the root cause. Jack Burbank, a senior IEEE member and VP at Sabre Systems, suggested possibilities including "faulty configuration changes" or "software updates gone wrong". Standard tech chaos, basically.

The outage affected nearly all parts of Verizon's cellular service in covered areas, including New York, New Jersey, the Carolinas, Texas, and Florida, among others. Coast to coast carnage.

Some users reported brief moments of restored service, only to watch their phones drop back into SOS mode minutes later. Proper tease.

The 911 Problem

Here's where things got dodgy. Emergency notification systems in New York and Washington D.C. warned that the outage "may be affecting some users to connect with 911". Officials urged people to use landlines, borrow phones from other carriers, or physically visit police and fire stations for emergencies.

New York Emergency Management specifically said in a statement that "Verizon is working to solve the issue" and advised people to "call using a device from another carrier, a landline, or go to a police precinct or fire station to report the emergency".

SOS mode theoretically allows 911 calls through other networks. But when your entire area runs on Verizon towers? Good luck with that.

The Real Story Behind AT&T and T-Mobile Reports

Those 1,800+ reports each for AT&T and T-Mobile? Misleading. T-Mobile directly confirmed it has no issues with its network. T-Mobile told CNN that "our network is operating normally and as expected" but noted that "due to Verizon's reported outage, our customers may not be able to reach someone with Verizon service".

So what happened? AT&T and T-Mobile customers tried calling or texting their Verizon-using mates. The calls failed. They assumed their own service was broken and reported outages. Classic confusion.

AT&T posted their own cheeky message: "Our network? Solid. If you're experiencing issues, it's not us...it's the other guys". Competitors waste no time, do they?

Interestingly, mobile virtual network operators using Verizon's infrastructure, like Visible, seemed to avoid the worst of the outage and continued working normally. Go figure.

Krispy Kreme Steps Up

While Verizon fumbled its response, Krispy Kreme announced free Original Glazed doughnuts for anyone affected between 5 PM and 7 PM local time. No proof of outage required. Just show up.

Their Instagram post read: "SOS got you down? We can hear you now", cheekily riffing on Verizon's old advertising slogan. At least someone found the humour in the situation.

The Workaround

If you were stuck in SOS mode, Wi-Fi calling offered the only lifeline. To enable it on iPhone, open settings, tap cellular, and choose Wi-Fi calling. Android users follow similar steps through their phone settings.

Modern iPhones, Google Pixels, and Samsung devices on Verizon also support satellite text messaging, though you need a clear view of the sky for that to work. Buildings and trees block the signal.

Once service returns, toggle aeroplane mode on for 15 seconds, then off. This forces your phone to reconnect to the network. Old trick, but effective.

Previous Outages

This marks the biggest and longest outage of 2026, though technically it's also the first outage of 2026. The last major Verizon outage occurred in October 2024.

The outage joins other high-profile tech disruptions from the past year, including an Amazon Web Services issue that "took down most of the web in October".

Verizon's engineering teams continued working through the afternoon, with reports showing the situation improving by late afternoon, though service restoration remained spotty.

The company offered no timeline for full restoration, no explanation for what caused the failure, and no compensation beyond apologies. Standard procedure for telecom disasters.

At least we got free doughnuts out of it.