Verizon breaks silence on massive outage. Heres what they said.

Updated on Jan. 14 at 3:05 ET: Verizon provided Mashable with an additional statement about the ongoing outage, although the company did not release any information on the cause of the problem.

"Verizon engineering teams are continuing to address today's service interruptions. Our teams remain fully deployed and are focused on the issue. We understand the impact this has on your day and remain committed to resolving this as quickly as possible."

Starting around noon on Wednesday, many Verizon customers discovered that their phones had gone into SOS mode. Now, Verizon has acknowledged the ongoing outage.

In a statement to Mashable, a Verizon representative said, "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."

The Verizon Support account on X also shared the same message on Wednesday afternoon, as confused customers took to social media seeking answers.

So far, Verizon has not indicated the cause of the problem or the timeline of a potential fix.

The platform Downdetector categorized the outage as "Very High," describing it as "a catastrophic break in standard cellular connectivity." (Disclosure: Mashable and Downdetector are both owned by Ziff Davis.)

"The impact is rated as Very High, with users primarily reporting Mobile Phone failure (59%) and a total loss of signal (34%). A recurring theme in user feedback is devices defaulting to "SOS mode," Downdetector said in a statement to Mashable.

When in SOS mode, customers are not able to make or receive phone calls or texts, and data services are also unavailable. However, customers should still be able to make emergency 911 calls via satellite, as per usual.

While Downdetector did receive a spike in user error reports for T-Mobile and AT&T, at this time, Verizon seems to be the only major mobile carrier suffering an outage. In a statement on X, T-Mobile said that its network was functioning normally at this time.

This is a developing story...