Verizon’s ‘SOS Only’ Outage Leaves Millions Disconnected, Triggers FCC Inquiry

Just after lunchtime on a Wednesday in January, millions of Verizon customers glanced at their phones and saw the same unsettling message where their signal bars should have been: “SOS only.”

Calls dropped midconversation. Texts stalled at “sending.” Banking apps, ride-hailing services and corporate email all timed out. In New York City and Washington, emergency officials took the unusual step of warning that for some residents, even 911 calls might not go through.

For more than 10 hours on Jan. 14, the nation’s largest wireless carrier struggled with a sprawling outage that knocked out voice, text and data service across much of the United States. By the time Verizon declared the problem resolved shortly after 10:15 p.m. Eastern, outage trackers had logged more than 1.5 million reports, making it one of the most widely documented telecom disruptions in recent years.

Verizon has blamed the failure on a software problem and said there is no sign of a cyberattack. The Federal Communications Commission has opened an inquiry. And as the company moves to offer a $20 credit to affected accounts, the episode is prompting fresh questions about how reliably Americans can reach emergency services and conduct daily life in a system that runs on a handful of deeply interconnected wireless networks.

A routine day, then “SOS only”

Reports of trouble began to surface around noon Eastern, as users in cities from New York and Boston to Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas and Los Angeles posted screenshots of “SOS” or “SOS only” indicators on their phones.

By early afternoon, the independent outage tracking site Downdetector was showing 170,000 to 180,000 simultaneous problem reports tied to Verizon service. The cumulative total of complaints linked to the carrier would pass 1.5 million later in the day.

Around 1 p.m., Verizon publicly acknowledged the disruption.

“We are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers,” the company said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, from its corporate news account. “Our engineers are engaged and working quickly to identify and resolve the issue. We understand how important reliable connectivity is and apologize for the inconvenience.”

A follow-up message about an hour later said engineering teams were “continuing to address today’s service interruptions” and were fully deployed to restore service.

Even as the company described the problem as affecting “some” customers, the practical impact was nationwide. Hot spots of complaints appeared around major metropolitan areas and along densely populated corridors on the East and West coasts.

Emergency alerts and public safety concerns

The most immediate worry was whether people could reach 911.

Phones showing “SOS” mode are no longer registered on their home carrier’s network but are designed to place emergency calls using any available signal, including from another provider. In practice, public safety officials said, that does not guarantee every attempt will get through, especially when a major carrier is experiencing widespread technical trouble.

New York City’s emergency notification system warned residents that the Verizon outage “may affect some users trying to call or text 911.” The alert urged people to try landlines, phones on other carriers or to go in person to a police precinct, firehouse or hospital if they could not reach emergency operators.

Similar advisories were issued in Washington and other cities.

As of late January, there was no publicly available, comprehensive tally of how many 911 calls failed or were delayed during the Verizon disruption. That stands in contrast to a 2024 outage at AT&T, when the FCC later reported that roughly 92 million calls, including more than 25,000 to 911, were blocked over the course of a day after a misconfigured software update caused AT&T’s mobile network to shut customers out.

In a post on X, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said the agency’s Consumer and Public Safety bureaus would investigate the Jan. 14 Verizon outage, including its impact on emergency services.

“Americans must be able to reach 911 and other critical services when they need them,” she wrote. “We will be looking closely at the causes and consequences of this disruption.”

A long afternoon for customers

As the afternoon wore on, some Verizon users reported partial restoration—for example, the return of voice calls but not data, or vice versa—while others said their phones remained unusable.

Tech and consumer websites ran live blogs advising customers to toggle airplane mode, restart devices or rely on Wi-Fi calling where possible. None of those steps could fix the underlying network problem, but a reboot did help some devices reconnect to the system as Verizon made changes behind the scenes.

Businesses that depend on mobile connectivity, from independent contractors to delivery companies, described lost appointments and stalled operations. Some remote workers reported being unable to receive authentication codes needed to log into corporate systems or banking apps.

Rival carriers said their own networks were stable but noted that their customers might still struggle to reach friends or clients on Verizon.

“T-Mobile’s network is operating normally,” T-Mobile said in a statement. “Some customers attempting to call or text Verizon customers may experience issues due to Verizon’s outage.”

AT&T made a similar statement, underscoring that its network was not affected.

Verizon says outage resolved, blames software

Shortly after 10:15 p.m. Eastern, nearly 10 hours after the first major wave of reports, Verizon said the issue had been resolved.

“The outage has been resolved,” the company said on X. “If customers are still having an issue, we encourage them to restart their devices to reconnect to the network.”

The following day, Verizon said in a statement that the disruption was caused by a software problem on its network.

“This was a software issue, and we are conducting a full review,” the company told technology outlets. “At this time, there is no indication that this was a cyber security issue.”

Verizon did not immediately publish a technical breakdown of what went wrong, such as which system failed, what change was made or why backup systems did not prevent a nationwide impact.

The company also issued a broader apology.

“Today, we let many of our customers down, and for that we are truly sorry,” Verizon said in a public statement, adding that it would offer a $20 credit “to help make it right.”

The credit applies per account, not per line, and is being made available through the MyVerizon app. Customers receive a notification and must redeem the offer to have it applied as a bill credit over the next one or two billing cycles. Verizon said it would contact business customers separately to discuss compensation.

A recurring pattern of software-driven failures

The January outage was not the first time in recent years that a software change has caused trouble for a major U.S. carrier—or for Verizon itself.

On Aug. 30, 2025, Verizon experienced a significant service disruption that left tens of thousands of customers unable to make calls for several hours. At the time, the company also attributed the problem to a software malfunction.

In February 2024, AT&T’s nationwide outage cut service to more than 125 million devices. An FCC report later concluded that a routine network expansion update had been deployed without adequate safeguards, triggering a protective setting that unintentionally disconnected users. The agency faulted AT&T’s testing and change management and said the company failed to properly notify 911 call centers about the extent of the problem.

Telecom and policy analysts say the incidents reflect the risks that come with increasingly complex, software-defined networks. Carriers have shifted much of their infrastructure to systems where configuration changes and software updates can instantly affect millions of customers.

Verizon serves about 146 million wireless subscribers and has roughly 36% to 37% of the U.S. mobile market. Its LTE and 5G networks cover virtually all of the U.S. population. That reach has been a central part of its pitch to consumers and businesses, especially as it expands into fixed wireless home internet and enterprise services.

Investors largely unfazed, for now

Despite the scale of the outage and the public outcry, Wall Street appeared relatively calm. Verizon shares closed up about 2% on Jan. 14, suggesting investors viewed the incident as a temporary setback rather than a sign of deeper financial trouble.

Analysts noted that while severe outages can damage a brand and invite regulatory scrutiny, they have historically had limited immediate financial impact if they are resolved within hours and do not involve data breaches.

If such events become more frequent, however, regulators and investors may begin to treat them as signs of underinvestment in network resilience or as sources of ongoing liability, especially when public safety is involved.

Culture of coping, and what comes next

As the outage dragged into the evening, some brands seized the moment. Krispy Kreme offered customers one free Original Glazed doughnut between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. local time, promoting the deal with the tagline “SOS got you down?” on social media.

Online, frustrated customers traded jokes about being “back in the 1990s” and living with “unlimited plans and zero service.” For people who rely on mobile phones as their only connection to doctors, caregivers or emergency services, the experience was less amusing.

The FCC’s investigation is expected to examine how many consumers were affected, how long 911 access was impaired and whether Verizon met federal reporting and notification requirements. Depending on its findings, the agency could pursue enforcement action or mandate changes to the way carriers test and roll out software updates.

Verizon, for its part, has pledged to review the incident and “learn from it,” but has not yet detailed what specific steps it will take to prevent another large-scale disruption.

For millions of customers who watched their phones slip into “SOS only” on an ordinary weekday, the outage offered a stark reminder: the digital lifelines that now underpin work, health care and emergency response run through a small number of networks, and when one of them falters, the effects are felt far beyond dropped calls.