Verizon Wireless Outage Leaves Customers In The Dark Across The US

by · HotHardware

Verizon users across the US may be asking “Can you hear me now?” as a widespread outage is affecting many customers. While the company does say it is aware of the issue, no timeline for a fix has been given.

For those affected, this means they will not be able to make calls, send or receive text messages, or access the web unless they have a WiFi signal available. According to the website Outage.Report, the outage started at 9:04am ET. The heat map (seen below) on the website shows the outage affecting nearly every state in the continental US.

Heat map as of approximately 12:35pm ET.

Downdetector also shows a massive outage for Verizon customers on its website. According to the website, the most reported locations include, Chicago, Phoenix, Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles, among a few others. It does appear, however, that the number of people without service is slowly beginning to come down.

Information as of approximately 12:35pm ET.

Many owners of a new iPhone 16 (and other iPhone models) may be seeing the SOS icon, instead of the typical 5G/LTE signal indicator at the top left of their screen right now. This is because for iPhone users who are being affected by the Verizon outage, the SOS status means the iPhone is not connected to a cellular network, but it can still be used to make emergency calls.

The outage has been trending on social media as well. On X, one user posted, “Everyone running to Twitter to see if Verizon is down.” While another user posted, “The cool thing about Twitter is that you can see if anyone else is having some sort of issue as you are, which why I’m glad I’m not alone in Verizon being down at the moment lol. Thought it was just me.”

The cellular outage has affected at least one writer who uses Verizon with HotHardware, Ben Funk, but this writer still has service with the carrier in South Carolina. How about all of you? Have any you been affected by the outage? Let us know in the comments.

**Update 9/30/2024 5:10pm ET Verizon gave an update on the outage via its X account (see below).

**Update 9/30/2024 7:45pm ET. Verizon posted another update via X, stating everyone should have service back. If anyone is still not receiving a cellular signal, Verizon suggests turning off the device and restarting it.