Verizon Experiences Widespread Phone Outages on August 31, 2025

Dateline: New York, NY - August 31, 2025

Verizon customers across the United States reported significant disruptions to mobile phone service on Saturday, August 30, with some devices limited to emergency-only (SOS) mode for several hours. The outage, attributed to a software issue, began shortly after midday Eastern Time and peaked in the late afternoon before engineers initiated widespread restorations.

By 12:15 p.m. ET, social media and outage-tracking platforms such as DownDetector registered the first surge of complaints. Reports climbed steadily, reaching nearly 23,000 individual incidents by 3:30 p.m. ET, with the hardest-hit areas including Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Orlando, Tampa, Miami, Omaha, and Indianapolis.

In an official statement to CBS News, Verizon acknowledged a “software issue impacting wireless service for some customers” and assured subscribers that “our engineers are engaged and we are working quickly to identify and solve the issue. Please visit our Check Network Status page for updates on service in your area. We know how much people rely on Verizon and apologize for any inconvenience. We appreciate your patience”.

Frustrated users took to platforms like X and Reddit, reporting scenarios ranging from text and call failures to devices displaying “SOS Only” or “No Service.” One Los Angeles customer lamented that their entire family’s phones were inoperable, while another in Dallas found that toggling the data connection briefly restored service.

Following hours of reduced connectivity, Verizon posted on X at approximately 9:12 p.m. ET that “we are starting to see service restoration in impacted areas. Our engineers have been working diligently on today’s service disruption, and continue to work to ensure remaining customers are fully restored as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience as we have worked through this issue”.

The outage coincided with the Labor Day weekend, intensifying customer frustration as many relied on their devices for travel coordination and emergency communications. Verizon advised users experiencing ongoing difficulties to restart their devices, enable Wi-Fi Calling where available, and monitor the company’s network status page for real-time updates.

This event marks Verizon’s second major outage within a year; a similar software-related disruption in October 2024 generated over 100,000 DownDetector reports and highlighted the carrier’s dependency on complex network management systems. Verizon has not provided a full post-mortem but commits to reviewing its software deployment processes to mitigate future incidents.

Despite restoration efforts, a subset of users continued to experience intermittent service late into Saturday night. Verizon’s customer service channels remain available for individual issue resolution, and the company is expected to release a detailed incident report in the coming days.