Some Verizon cellular customers were faced with their phone in "SOS mode" on Monday and unable to use the network, according to reports on Downdetector and the telecommunication company's support account on social media.
The number of reports of service issues on Downdetector had decreased by Monday afternoon from their morning peak but were still coming in.
Not all customers appeared to have been impacted.
Around 5 p.m. EST on Monday, Verizon said its engineers were making progress and service was starting to be restored. About two hours later, the company stated that engineers had "fully restored" service following the "network disruption," and recommended anyone still experiencing issues to restart their device.
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"We know how much people rely on Verizon and apologize for any inconvenience. We appreciate your patience.," Verizon said on social media.
In a statement earlier on Monday, Verizon said, "We 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."
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What Verizon services were impacted?
According to a post on Verizon's social media account for support, "The outage is affecting some customers' Data, Voice, and Text services. We are working to resolve the issue, but there is no ETR. We recommend enabling Wi-Fi calling if you can connect to a secure Wi-Fi source."
How is Verizon responding to customers on social media?
Verizon's support account responded to users Monday afternoon saying: "We are diligently working on getting your service back up and running in a timely manner. Thanks so much for your patience during this process. We would be happy to check on any other services or promotions that may be available to you."
Another response from Verizon on the account said, "Hello, we 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. Thanks for your understanding."
What is SOS mode?
Emergency SOS allows iPhone users to make automatic calls to emergency services and share their location with them when they don't have cellular service.
iPhone users can also create emergency contacts that will receive a text message of the user's location after the emergency call ends. Emergency services will receive updates on changes to location for a limited time after the user enters SOS mode. If a user has location services off, it will automatically turn on temporarily.
Once location is shared, users will get a reminder to stop sharing their location every four hours for 24 hours. To shut off location sharing, users can tap the status bar and select "Stop Sharing Emergency Location."
Users can also text emergency services via satellite on all iPhone 14 or later models when no cellular service or Wi-Fi is available. iPhone 14 or later and Apple Watch also have Crash Detection.
How to call emergency services in SOS mode
For iPhone 8 or later:
- Press and hold the side button and one of the volume buttons until the Emergency SOS slide appears.
- Drag the Emergency Call slider to call emergency services. If you continue to hold down the side button and volume button, instead of dragging the slider, a countdown begins and an alert sounds. If you release the buttons after the countdown, your iPhone automatically calls emergency services.
For iPhone 7 or earlier:
- Rapidly press the side (or top) button five times. The Emergency Call slider will appear.
- Drag the Emergency SOS slider to call emergency services.
