In short, when you see SOS on your phone, it means you're not connected to a cellular network. "If you see SOS or 'SOS only' in the status bar, your device isn't connected to your cellular network, but you can still make emergency calls through other carrier networks," reads an Apple support page on the feature.

Verizon said it would "work through the night until service is restored" and said it would provide "account credits" for any customer who lost service.

The outage lasted more than 10 hours and brought voice and data services to a halt for many customers of the country's largest wireless network.

Verizon says a software problem caused the glitch and it is conducting a postmortem, but experts say outages are "a fact of life" these days.

Verizon confirmed the outage on social media, saying it is working to restore service. Verizon customers across the U.S. reported problems with their phone service on Wednesday. The outage was resolved at around 10:30 p.m.

In a post on X, officials said the company planned to issue account credits to customers affected by an outage on Wednesday. Some customers were seeing an "SOS" mode, which indicates no cell service,

Verizon said a major service outage affecting thousands of customers that lasted for hours and prevented some local 911 calls from going through was resolved late Wednesday night.

Verizon said on Wednesday that its wireless service was suffering an outage impacting cellular data and voice services