Verizon outage leaves hundreds of thousands without service

Hundreds of thousands of Verizon cell phone users are without service on Wednesday afternoon, the company said.

As of 1 p.m. DownDetector.com had compiled 460,000 user-generated reports, indicating widespread failure of mobile voice and data services.

Most of those affected appeared to be in the eastern half of the U.S.

Phones were showing “SOS” — indicating no service or they were searching for a signal.

“We are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers,” Verizon said on X (formerly Twitter). “Our engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly.”