Major Cell Carrier Reports Widespread Outages Across Upstate New York

Earlier this morning, I went to make a call, and all of a sudden, it dropped. I was a little confused, and then saw that I had no service whatsoever.

Read More: Upstate New York Man Arrested After Prank Calling 911

I was concerned, I'd payed my bills on time, and I was in an area I knew had reliable service, so what could possibly be happening??

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Verizon Outages

If this happened to you on January 14th, you're likely covered by Verizon. At around 11:30a.m., hundreds of thousands of Verizon phones started showing "SOS" signals, and were unable to connect to the network.

This means you can't send texts, make phone calls, or surf the web without the help of local wi-fi. This has been occurring across America, and as such, has greatly impacted Upstate New York and the state's capital region. As the largest cell provider in the United States, this has a massive reach and will likely harm businesses, personal relationships, and government offices.

When Will it Be Back Up?

If you're running around, freaking out, don't worry. Verizon has acknowledged the issues and is working tirelessly to fix it. At 1:07 p.m. EST they tweeted that they were aware of the issue and their engineers were in the process of fixing it.

Unfortunately, no cause has been established, and it's unclear if this situation is an hours-long one or a days-long one. Verizon seems to be the only carrier affected, so T-Mobile and AT&T customers can breathe easy. If you need to use your phone at the moment, find a place to connect to Wi-Fi which will allow you to use the essentials of your phone.