Following reports from thousands of users, the Federal Communications Commission said on Monday that it was looking into a Verizon network outage across the United States
Many people in Chicago and Seattle were left without power, and some iPhone users were stuck in “SOS” mode.
Tracking website Downdetector.com says the outage started around 9:30 a.m. ET, and there have been 28,842 reports as of 5:02 p.m. ET. Minneapolis, Phoenix, Omaha, and Denver are some places reported as being affected the most.
Engineers at Verizon Communications said they were progressing on the network problem, and service has begun to return.
Verizon said, “We apologize for any trouble this may have caused some of our customers today,” but they didn’t say why the service was down.
Downdetector.com says that at its busiest time, 11:19 a.m. ET, there were about 105,000 down reports.
It said the Federal Communications Commission was “working to determine the cause and extent of these service disruptions.”
Some Verizon users on the social media site X said their phones were stuck in “SOS” mode.
Apple’s website says that if an iPhone isn’t linked to a cellular network, “SOS” will appear in the status bar. However, the phone can still make emergency calls through other carriers.
As of 5:15 p.m. ET, 448 reports of problems with AT&T service were also shown on the outage tracking website. However, the company said there was no nationwide problem, and the network was working properly.
Just hours ago, Verizon made a deal with the infrastructure company Vertical Bridge to lease, run, and manage 6,339 cell phone towers across the US for $3.3 billion. This is when the outage was reported.
