Verizon Outage: Californian Users’ Phones Stuck in SOS Mode

Monday, September 30: A Verizon outage hit mobile phone customers across California and other parts of the US. The outage limited some residents to emergency phone calls, so-called SOS mode.

On Downdetector, hundreds of customers in the Sacramento area reported the outages around 7 a.m. As of writing, some customers said their phones were still in SOS mode.

The New York-based telecommunications company acknowledged the issue and assured its customers that engineers were trying to identify and solve it. 

What Is SOS Mode?

SOS mode occurs when cellphone networks are unavailable for iPhones and other mobile phones. Phones switch to SOS mode when connections fail, but users can still make emergency calls, such as 911, using other cellphone carrier networks.

As expected, many Verizon customers vented out frustrations on social media platforms.