It's down for me in Bay Area with the SOS message and unable to send or receive text messages. Verizon's website didn't say anything but there is a lot of chatter about the outage in the /r/verizon subreddit.
Frustratingly I wasn't able to log into their online support because I couldn't two factor authenticate mysef because I couldn't receive text messages!
I called customer support and they were like, "our system is down and unable to take calls" and it hung up on me.
cosmic_cheese · 13h ago
I was on a call and got cut off, after which all attempts to call the other person back immediately failed. I thought it was an iOS 26 bug and rebooted the phone, which fixed it and allowed me to call again.
From what we know so far (affects random people, a vague ETA was given (and passed)), my suspicion is that this was a database shard that died and they're trying to recover from deep storage.
kotaKat · 14h ago
Weirdly no issues out here in northern NY, off of the Verizon core that I believe is hosted out in central NY/Syracuse?
I also haven't had any Network Extender outages indicating a more 'national' issue outside of a coast?
geor9e · 12h ago
Clickbait headline by a tabloid. Crafted to sound like 100% of USA, but on a technicality means 2+ people, which they clarify after click. If they were honest and inserted "some", they would get less clicks and earn less ad revenue.
I have no doubt people were affected, but I have 390mbps up 100mbps down on my Verizon phone in San Francisco right now. Just checked. They baited me good.
kstrauser · 10h ago
Mine was out completely, here in East Bay. My wife’s identical phone, on the same account, worked perfectly.
I’m betting it’ll turn out to be an authentication issue: if you were already known to the system before it went down, you stayed connected. If your periodic auth refresh happened afterward, you couldn’t reconnect to the network.
I happened to be in a strip mall with a Verizon store when it went out, so I ducked in to see if there was a problem with my account. The manager was meeting people at the door. “Is your phone showing SOS? They called and told us it was a national outage, and we don’t know when it’ll be back up.”
bitwrangler · 14h ago
my iphone 16 pro works, but wife's iphone 14 pro is "sos only" mode.
we tried the full reset (volume up/down/side button hold) and network reset, which is not helping.
Both my and her phone have same cellular data settings.
tried calling '611' verizon help line which dumps us saying "the system is down" unable to take calls.
it's a big outage for sure.
siavosh · 14h ago
That explains it. Oddly i lost connection but not my wife. Same family plan, same location.
kmanlives · 12h ago
Same here in metro Atlanta. My wife has some service (intermittent texts, has internet, but can't receive incoming calls) but I have SOS mode (with same model iPhone 16 pro).
This is the first time we've had a major outage affect our VZW service, and we've been with them for over 10 years.
I shouldn't be, but I was shocked at how painful it is to lose our connection while out running errands.
storf45 · 12h ago
Same thing happened to my wife. My phone was fine but she was worried something had happened to hers as it was SOS only. I had her go to the Verizon store which is where they told her about the outage.
randycupertino · 13h ago
That is weird one of you is out and the other isn't. Are you both on ios? I have ios in the Bay Area and am out also.
myvoiceismypass · 14h ago
I’m experiencing this right now, in SOS mode on Verizon (Oakland)
Frustratingly I wasn't able to log into their online support because I couldn't two factor authenticate mysef because I couldn't receive text messages!
I called customer support and they were like, "our system is down and unable to take calls" and it hung up on me.
I also haven't had any Network Extender outages indicating a more 'national' issue outside of a coast?
I have no doubt people were affected, but I have 390mbps up 100mbps down on my Verizon phone in San Francisco right now. Just checked. They baited me good.
I’m betting it’ll turn out to be an authentication issue: if you were already known to the system before it went down, you stayed connected. If your periodic auth refresh happened afterward, you couldn’t reconnect to the network.
I happened to be in a strip mall with a Verizon store when it went out, so I ducked in to see if there was a problem with my account. The manager was meeting people at the door. “Is your phone showing SOS? They called and told us it was a national outage, and we don’t know when it’ll be back up.”
we tried the full reset (volume up/down/side button hold) and network reset, which is not helping.
Both my and her phone have same cellular data settings.
tried calling '611' verizon help line which dumps us saying "the system is down" unable to take calls.
it's a big outage for sure.
This is the first time we've had a major outage affect our VZW service, and we've been with them for over 10 years.
I shouldn't be, but I was shocked at how painful it is to lose our connection while out running errands.