Mashable – A massive Verizon outage has caused widespread, nationwide connectivity issues for customers across the U.S.
As of 12:00 p.m. ET, DownDetector (a site that shares the same parent company as Mashable) shows that there have been over 100,000 reports of Verizon outages.
Fifty percent say that the issue involves their mobile phone, 35 percent say they’re not getting any signals, and 14 percent say they’re experiencing a total blackout.
Based on Google Trends, there’s been an uptick of people searching for, “Why is my phone in SOS?”
This captures the experience that numerous Verizon users have been reporting; many have claimed that their phones are now limited to SOS service.
According to DownDetector’s heat map, it appears that outages are concentrated in the following states: New York, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, and North Carolina.
According to Apple, the SOS message appears when “your device isn’t connected to your cellular network,” but it also means you can make emergency calls through other carrier networks.
The feature is only available in the U.S., Australia and Canada.
“When SOS appears in your iPhone status bar, it means a cellular network is available for emergency calls,” the company says.
Those who make a call with SOS will automatically go to a local emergency number and their location will be shared with emergency services.
Users can also set up their phones so that after they make an emergency SOS call, their phone alerts emergency contacts with a text message that includes their current location — and will update those contacts if that location changes.
