A widespread outage affecting Verizon’s network on January 14, 2026 caused many users across the United States to lose normal cell service and see their phones display “SOS” or “SOS only” — a sign that the device isn’t connected to its carrier’s network but can still make emergency calls.
Reports of service problems began climbing around midday, with tens of thousands of customers noting issues with voice calls, mobile data, and signal strength on the outage tracking site Downdetector. Verizon acknowledged the disruption on social media, saying engineers were actively working to fix the problem and apologizing for the inconvenience.
By later in the day, Verizon said the outage had been resolved and urged any remaining affected users to restart their devices. The company also announced that impacted customers may receive account credits for the interruption.
During the outage, customers shared experiences online of hours without regular connectivity and attempts to troubleshoot by rebooting their phones. While networks eventually returned to normal, many users expressed frustration over the extended loss of service.
Verizon Service Disruption Leaves Customers Facing ‘SOS’ Mode Alerts
By Media Team
