Verizon outage affects more than 2 million users: What ‘SOS’ means, refunds, more updates

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a favorite source On Google.

ZDNET Highlights

• Thousands of Verizon customers are currently experiencing a data outage.
• This prevents users from making phone calls and browsing on cellular networks.
• The outage will cause an SOS icon to appear on select iPhone models.

If you suddenly find yourself without a Verizon signal, you’re not alone. The Big Red cellular network is currently experiencing a major service outage in the US, with over 2 million reports in major cities including New York City, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Houston in the past 24 hours.

Also: Your Phone Is Sharing Data Without Your Knowledge – How to Stop It ASAP

Verizon is classifying the impact as “very high”, with most complaints being reported as either “mobile phone problems” or “lack of signal”. If you’re one of the many people affected, you may notice that your phone is defaulting to SOS mode, a common setting when the device no longer has cellular connectivity.

latest updates

Verizon shared on x At 4:12 PM ET it reported that its “team is actively working to fix today’s service issue that is impacting some customers.” The company has not yet provided information on when affected customers can expect service to be restored.

You can track the latest service updates in your local area through Verizon’s network status page.

Customer Feedbacks

commentator downdetector Continue to express disappointment in Wednesday’s cuts, and with good reason.

One user mistook the signal loss for the fact that they had forgotten to pay the bill and their phone had been disconnected. Another noted the ever-increasing cost of phone bills, especially with Verizon’s 5G plans. A family attending a concert was unable to display their QR-coded tickets due to a loss of service.

One promising IT candidate suggested that Verizon shut down and restart its servers as an attempt to fix the problem.

(Disclosure: DownDetector is owned by Ziff Davis, parent company of ZDNET.)

Will I get a refund, discount or credit for the outage?

Although Verizon has not confirmed whether affected customers will receive any type of compensation for Wednesday’s issues, a customer service representative at Mashable.

Also: My phone was having trouble getting a signal: These 5 quick fixes instantly improved its reception

You may want to take the reports with a grain of salt, as no single support agent can fully represent Verizon’s stance on how to handle the situation. But given the impact of the outage, expect some kind of compensation by getting things started again.

For what it’s worth, Krispy Kreme is responding to the problem nationwide by promoting “”.free donut” The campaign runs from 5 to 7 p.m. local time. So if you live on the West Coast, you can still get yourself a sweet treat.

What does the SOS icon mean?

Some readers have reached out to me (Adrian) wondering why a satellite icon and the words SOS suddenly started appearing in the status bar at the top on their iPhones. They had not seen this before and were concerned that their iPhone was making an emergency SOS call, and they could be billed for it or get in trouble.

Strange!

In 2022, Apple launches Emergency SOS in many countries via satellite iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max. At this point, all recent iPhone models, including the 17 series, support outer space technology.

Also: How I use Samsung’s hidden Wi-Fi menu to seriously upgrade my Internet connectivity

If you have one of these handsets and you live in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland or the UK, you can test it by tapping on. Settings > Emergency SOSscrolling to the bottom of the page Emergency SOS via Satellite and tapping try demo.

But this was not happening here.

After a bit of back and forth, I came up with a way to replicate this.

• I had to be out of cellular and Wi-Fi coverage (I turned off the Wi-Fi), either in the woods or in a building.
• Have a mapping app like Google Maps or Waze running (this may work with other apps, but this is what works for me).
• wait! This may or may not pop up.

And there it was!

In the Control Center panel, I can only see one satellite.

I reached out to Apple technical support about this issue, and after doing some testing on my iPhone, I was told that this is normal behavior, even though no emergency SOS calls are being made and no data can be sent or received over the satellite network (other than making the actual emergency SOS call).

I asked if there was a possibility that this would cost me money or get me into trouble because my handset was making SOS satellite calls, and I was told there was no danger.

Too: best satellite phone

So, if you see “SOS Satellite” on your iPhone, don’t panic. This is probably happening because you’re out of signal coverage, but you’re not actually making an SOS call, and you won’t get a bill or get in trouble.

Whether this is a bug or a feature, I’m not sure. Maybe Apple is testing something. Maybe it’s related to Find My. This is probably an uncommon problem that occurs when running mapping apps.