An Iphone without cell service that has the SOS feature on

Disclaimer: All Updates as of Jan. 14, 2026 at 6:30 p.m.

 

As students left the school after midterms on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, many noted the letters “SOS”  displayed in their cell service column, indicating a loss of connection. What initially seemed to be a routine Staples High School internet issue, was actually a much larger problem, affecting most of America.

“Sorry everyone… it’s been rough,” @WestportMoms on Instagram said.

As of 12:37 p.m., over 185,000 customers have reported outages to Verizon. This disruption particularly affected users who relied on cellular service rather than Wi-Fi, limiting communication and access to essential services, such as sending texts, making calls and accessing mobile data without Wi-Fi.

“We have no new news right now,” a Westport Verizon employee said at 5:45 p.m.

At 1:07 p.m., @VerizonNews on X posted: “We are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers. Our engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly. We understand how important reliable connectivity is and apologize for the inconvenience.”

While the effects were felt greatly in Westport, this outage also disrupted major cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Las Vegas, Portland (Oregon) and Washington D.C. 

“

The Verizon outage has been awful for me and people out and about who have no Wi-Fi,”

— Will Speller ’28

“The Verizon outage has been awful for me and people out and about who have no Wi-Fi,” Will Speller ’28 said. “I have not been able to text my parents and friends while out of the house.”

According to usmobile.com, in Westport, Verizon offers residents a 98.78% coverage rate and has a total network availability reaching up to 99.25%. According to ispreports.com, Verizon offers fixed wireless service to 54.3% of Westport homes, which means up to 15,000 Westport citizens could be experiencing this outage.

By 3:30 p.m. the number of Verizon customers affected by the outage had dropped down to under 60,000 people. At 4:12 p.m. @VerizonNews posted on X that “Verizon’s team is on the ground actively working to fix today’s service issue that is impacting some customers. We know this is a huge inconvenience, and our top priority is to get you back online and connected as fast as possible. We appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this issue.”

Now, as service gradually returns for some customers, some are still experiencing the effects of this outage.

“[The outage] has definitely impacted my day,” Jonah Bomback ’27 said. “I had a hard time making a call for SAT tutoring.”