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If you woke up to SOS mode on your Verizon phone, you weren't alone [UPDATED]

An outage hit major cities around 1 a.m. ET with service restored by 3 a.m.

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By Tsveta Ermenkova

Updated: Oct 10, 2025, 1:40 AM

Update from October 10, 2025

Verizon has confirmed that there was indeed a brief service outage yesterday affecting some of its users, and that the issue was quickly resolved. However, the company didn’t share any details about what caused the interruption.

Some Verizon customers in the Charlotte, NC area may have experienced a brief service interruption in the early morning hours Thursday. Engineers were able to identify and quickly resolve the issue.

– a Verizon spokesperson, October 10, 2025

The original story from October 9, 2025 follows below:

Some Verizon customers across the country woke up to find their phones showing “SOS mode” instead of a signal early Thursday morning.

Verizon outage hit overnight, but service came back fast

The disruption hit around 1 a.m. ET, leaving hundreds of users without access to calls, texts, or data. By early morning, though, service seemed to be mostly back to normal.

According to Downdetector, which tracks service issues across networks, the outage was widespread – with reports coming in from New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Chicago, Seattle, Phoenix, and Atlanta.

This map shows where the most reports came from. | Image credit – Downdetector

Phone keeps ending calls and when I try to call back, it says it couldn't connect.

– User Julie Spears, October 2025

In knoxville. Phone service and mobile internet constantly going out.

– User Daniel, October 2025

Downdetector’s data shows reports skyrocketed right around midnight ET, peaking at 1,244 complaints, before quickly dropping off as the network came back online.

Most users – around 51% – reported issues with their phones, while another 32% said their 5G home internet was affected. Whatever caused it, Verizon seems to have fixed the problem fast, as everything looks stable now.

More than half of the reports were for lost phone connection. | Image credit – Downdetector

The biggest carrier in the US felt the ripple

As the largest mobile and broadband provider in the US, Verizon serves over 146 million wireless connections. So, when something like this happens, it can impact both homes and businesses across the country.

Luckily, because the outage happened overnight, the effect was likely minimal. And when you think about it, a few hundred reports out of millions of users isn’t exactly catastrophic.

Did your Verizon service go down last night?

Yep, I lost signal completely.

36.51%

Just noticed SOS mode for a bit.

6.35%

Nope, everything worked fine.

38.1%

I’m not on Verizon.

19.05%

Outages happen – even to the biggest carriers

Even the biggest networks have off days. Just recently, T-Mobile had an outage of its own, and a few weeks before that, AT&T customers ran into similar problems.

These types of issues can stem from a lot of things – software bugs, bad updates, or mistakes in complex network configurations. Sometimes, physical damage like fiber cuts from construction, power outages, or even severe weather can also bring service down. Cyberattacks are rare but not impossible, too.

Whatever the cause this time, it’s clear Verizon managed to get things under control quickly – and for now, everything’s running smoothly again.

We've reached out to Verizon for a comment and will update the story when we have a response.

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Tsveta, a passionate technology enthusiast and accomplished playwright, combines her love for mobile technologies and writing to explore and reveal the transformative power of tech. From being an early follower of PhoneArena to relying exclusively on her smartphone for photography, she embraces the immense capabilities of compact devices in our daily lives. With a Journalism degree and an explorative spirit, Tsveta not only provides expert insights into the world of gadgets and smartphones but also shares a unique perspective shaped by her diverse interests in travel, culture, and visual storytelling.

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