Verizon is experiencing a massive outage across the country

A large number of Verizon customers are starting off their Monday with phone service issues due to an outage. Reports of problems spiked on the service tracker Downdetector starting at 10:00 a.m. ET. Since then, there have been more than 103,000 reports of customers having issues with Verizon on Downdetector and plenty of reports of problems on social media as well.

I first noticed the problem myself when I wasn’t receiving text messages to verify an online account. I then realized my phone showed I didn’t have service and was switching between “Emergency calls only” mode and “Searching for service.” Such messages signify the phone has been disconnected from the network, either from poor connection or problems with the carrier’s network.

Outage reports are coming from across the country, but the top locations at the time of writing are Chicago, Phoenix, Denver, Indianapolis, Omaha, Minneapolis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and Seattle, according to Downdetector.

Customers are taking to social media to report the outage, sharing their experiences on X (formerly Twitter) and Threads using the hashtag #VerizonOutage. Many are reporting the inability to make outbound calls only, while others can make calls of any type. Messaging is also impacted for some. Interestingly, not all phones are experiencing these issues, and people with multiple Verizon lines (either for themselves or for their family) are reporting that one line is fine while the other is in SOS mode.

The cause of the outage is unknown at this time. Verizon released a statement on X that they “are aware of an issue impacting service for some customers. Our engineers are engaged, and we are working quickly to identify and solve the issue.” Thankfully, outage reports have been receding since roughly 12:00 p.m. ET, with numbers down to just over 70,000 as of 12:10 p.m. ET. The outage peaked at 104,932 reported outages at 11:13 a.m. ET.