{"id":61024,"date":"2026-01-14T18:44:39","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T23:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=61024"},"modified":"2026-01-14T18:44:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T23:44:45","slug":"verizon-outage-users-report-phones-stuck-in-sos-mode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2026\/01\/14\/verizon-outage-users-report-phones-stuck-in-sos-mode\/","title":{"rendered":"Verizon outage: Users report phones stuck in \u2018SOS\u2019 mode"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The country\u2019s largest cell phone provider was experiencing major issues on Wednesday. Verizon subscribers found their phones were suddenly left without service and stuck in \u201cSOS\u201d mode.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

DownDetector, a site that tracks outages, showed a spike in issues affecting Verizon <\/a>starting just before 9 a.m. Pacific Time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Complaints started to pour in on X<\/a> from users in several states, including Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Users reported<\/a> their phones were unable to make calls and were in \u201cSOS\u201d mode, meaning they couldn\u2019t connect to the network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a phone is in \u201cSOS\u201d mode<\/a>, emergency calls to 911 should still work using other networks or a satellite connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cell carrier\u2019s support team was responding to users<\/a>, saying, \u201cWe are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers. Our engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly. We understand how important reliable connectivity is and apologize for the inconvenience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company did not give an estimated time for service to be fully restored. Four hours into the outage<\/a>, Verizon said engineers were still working to fix service interruptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some users reported service returned for some time, but then saw their phones went back to \u201cSOS\u201d mode in the afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nexstar reached out to Verizon for more information, but has not heard back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What to do if your phone is in \u201cSOS\u201d mode<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get your phone back online you have an option: connect to Wi-Fi. If you enable Wi-Fi calling in your phone\u2019s settings, you should still be able to make calls even during the outage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re not able to connect to Wi-Fi, you may be out of luck when it comes to phone calls as long as the outage persists. Many other apps, however, should still be working even without a connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the outage is fixed, you may need to force your phone to try reconnecting to the network. Apple advises turning on Airplane Mode<\/a> for at least 15 seconds, then turning it off, to see if your device will reconnect<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The country\u2019s largest cell phone provider was experiencing major issues on Wednesday. Verizon subscribers found their phones were suddenly left without service and stuck in \u201cSOS\u201d mode. DownDetector, a site… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"17","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNlwvMDFcL1Zlcml6b24ud2VicD9maXQ9Mjk2JTJDMTcwJnNzbD0xIiwidHh0IjoiVmVyaXpvbiBvdXRhZ2U6IFVzZXJzIHJlcG9ydCBwaG9uZXMgc3R1Y2sgaW4gXHUyMDE4U09TXHUyMDE5IG1vZGUiLCJ0ZW1wbGF0ZSI6ImhpZ2h3YXkiLCJmb250IjoiIiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.a_Wv_scWxrqtGeFrKjtlKjUb-npkabfbgmZSgnjwyUEMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":61025,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Verizon.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[13205],"class_list":["post-61024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-and-world-news","tag-verizon-outage-users-report-phones-stuck-in-sos-mode"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61026,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61024\/revisions\/61026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}